A Monster and a Faye
by ManicPixieStarGirl
Summary: Randall has been banished to an unfamiliar world. He has nothing but hate now for monsters and humans alike. But when Randall meets a human who doesn't act like the mindless creature he expects, he begins to question himself. Could humans really be anything other than a energy source? Randall will have to choose between two uncertain fates, and two possibly hostile worlds.
1. Swamps and Rednecks

He heard the door slam. He tried to turn around and reach it before it was destroyed, but he was dizzy. He had been hit in the head too many times and his fronds had been pulled so hard that he still didn't have his balance after being thrown into this strange world. It still didn't feel real. He reached for the door, bleary eyed. It opened to a child's closet, clothes and toys. _Where, how, what?_ His mind was a jumble of partly formed questions. He desperately had to find another door, before the power went out in all of them. He went through the first door he saw without really thinking. The only thing going through his mind was how much he had to get home, had to fix the mess which that fool had created. _I'm going to kill him. That overgrown human-lover, I'm going to kill him for doing this to me._

He realized too late exactly where he was and what it meant to be there. When he opened the door, a small human, maybe about 10 years old was standing in a shabby hallway, staring at him. He had been reaching for the door to his room. Randall was too disoriented still to camouflage himself. The reality of his situation still hadn't sank in. He tried to scare the boy away, but all he could manage was a low growl. The boy backed up and went into another room. Randall followed the boy in half a daze, still trying to find the door that he so desperately needed. He heard the boy say something, but couldn't quite make out what it was. The words were heavily accented, and improperly formed. He did hear something about a "gator" whatever that was, and the words "the house". He stumbled into a dingy room, confused, trying to find another bedroom with a closet door before he ran out of time. Then he heard another voice. It was even more difficult to understand than the boy's voice, but he did catch the word, "shovel". _Animals,_ he thought, _can't even speak properly._

Suddenly, there was a sharp pain in his head, then his chin. He couldn't react. He tried to think. He was being attacked. _Shovel!_ He thought. A human female that he had not noticed before was hitting him in the head with a shovel. He knew that he didn't have the faculties to fight back, not right now. He was in shock, and nothing felt real. He had to get away. He had to hide. He pushed everything else from his mind but the urge to hide, and finally felt himself blend. _Run!_ He told himself. His legs weren't working as well as they should have been, but they did carry him in the direction that he wanted to go, away from the humans. He could hear them shouting incoherently behind him as he exited the trailer. It was dark outside, too dark for him to see, and he had no way of knowing where he was in relation to anything else. He began to feel panicked as he the reality set in. He was trapped in the human world, and he didn't know what part of the world he was in.

 _Stop it, pull yourself together, use your senses. You can do this._ He reached up to stroke his fronds, which he often used as a gesture to calm himself when stressed. This time, he remembered too late that they were still sore from being pulled so hard. He did calm down a little, but now he was in even more pain than before. He focused through it. He still couldn't see, his eyesight had never been that great, especially not at night. He could hear though, and there were sounds everywhere. Most were obviously animal sounds, but ones that he had never heard before. There was another sound, distant, the sound of moving vehicles. He decided to move towards that. He couldn't let himself be seen by more humans until he was ready to deal with them, but he thought that if he could get to whatever these creatures' excuse for civilization was, there a possibility of learning something about his surroundings. He began the difficult task of traveling in the dark to an unknown location.

He soon realized that he was in a swamp. That narrowed it down at least a bit. The humans that he had encountered had spoken English. It was an odd dialect of English, and poorly spoken, but English nonetheless. Form what he knew of human geography that he had learned while scaring, the only place in the human world that had a swamp populated by English speakers was the Southern United States. Southern American humans were known for their stupidity and their aggression. Randall remembered that the most isolated Southern American kids were some of the hardest to scare. Some even had weapons on rare occasions. Randall snarled in disdain at the thought of being forced to stay for any length of time in this barbaric world. _When I get my hands on that big, blue jackass! Him and that one eyed creep._

He smiled to himself thinking of all the ways that he could get his revenge. It was all Sullivan's fault. Sullivan had overshadowed him and ruined his reputation. Sullivan had stolen the child. Sullivan had broken his beloved machine. Sullivan driven him to the breaking point. And Sullivan had illegally banished him to this stinking, human infested place. Randall was no longer smiling, but his anger did give him sharper senses through the pain that he still felt in his head. He was still struggling to make it to the road that he could hear beyond the trees, but he had made some progress. He was covered in mud, and the wetness seemed to be actively pulling the heat from his body. Randall noticed that it wasn't just the mud. The air was getting colder as the night progressed. He felt himself slowing down as the heat left his body. As a reptile, Randall relied on external heat sources to keep himself active. Right now, in the monster world, it was Spring, and warm enough that Randall did not have to worry too much about his temperature. But that fact obviously didn't necessarily correlate to the human world. He would have to find shelter soon, before he got too cold to move. _Damn you, Sullivan, I'll kill you for this._

By the time he actually made it to the road, he could barely move. There was a glowing sign over a building that said "Louisiana Creole Cookin' Truck Stop" and a street lamp over deserted road. _So, Louisiana, that's where I am. Ok. Nothing here but redneck humans and swamp. Where do I want to be? Not here. Home. Can't go home. Not yet. Bed. Sleep. Focus. Where to go. North. Somewhere more populated. Find a closet door to go through. North then... to a city... Gotta... get..._ His mind was becoming slower by the minute. As luck would have it, a large truck drove up to the building with the neon sign and stopped under an overhang. As the human trucker went into the building, Randall went to read the license plate. He did his best to stay blended as he entered the light from the overhang. He finally got close enough to read the plate with his eyes squinted. Virginia. The truck was from Virginia. It would have to do. Randall used the last of his strength to open the sliding door in the back of the truck. He didn't even notice what it's cargo was as he crawled in. He was freezing cold, hurt to a degree that he was still unsure of, and exhausted to the point of collapse. He closed the door behind him and curled up miserably on the truck's metal floor. There was nothing left to do but whimper until he fell into a delirious sleep.


	2. A Stranger in a Strange Land

Randall did not notice when the human opened the back door to the truck. He was still too cold and too sleepy to be aware of his surroundings. The trucker had stopped on the side of the highway because he remembered that he hadn't checked the seal on his back door the last time he had gotten gas, about seven hours ago. Being paranoid, he could not bear driving another mile without checking it, for fear that someone might had stolen something while he was inside the stop. The man had done this dozens of times, always with the same result, reassurance that the seal was intact and a mental note to be more careful about checking it when he was supposed to. This time though, was different. Randall woke when he heard the man yell.

"What the fuck? What the literal fuck!" Randall realized he was in trouble, but he was still too cold to move very quickly. He tried to look up and see what was going on. The trucker grabbed for the rod that he used to close the door when it was out of reach overhead. Randall was able to focus enough to barely make out a human from holding a long, metal looking object. He became very afraid that this human meant to hit him with whatever he was holding. He managed to camouflage himself and hoped it would be enough to confuse the brute until he could muster the strength to move. It seemed to work. The human stood there dumbfounded. "Where did you go you freaky, lizard fuck? Where'd you go? Damn critter. What the fuck? Fuckin' mutant swamp freak. What the hell! Man, I hearda chemicals causin' all kindsa weird mutations in critters in the water. Never heard of anything like that freaking monster. Musta ran off, damn mutant." While the man stood there ranting and cussing, Randall managed to slowly make his way out of the truck and away from the highway. He could hear the man still yelling behind him. "You hear that ya mutant freak, stay the fuck out of my rig! Lucky nothin's missin', or I'd hunt ya down and mount ya on my goddamn wall!"

 _That was way too close._ Randall thought to himself. _And stupid. What was I thinking, hitchhiking in the back of a human truck. Falling asleep where I could be seen like that? What the hell, Randall? I must have been hit in the head worse than I thought._ He knew that he would need to warm up before he could come up with a better plan for himself. He began to search for a place to bask. In the monster world, during the cold months, basking stations were set up throughout the city so that reptiles could heat themselves whenever they needed to. But Randall knew better than to expect such a luxury in a monster-less world. _Animals, barbarians_ , he had been met with nothing but pain and fear from these creatures since the moment he had entered their world. He was convinced that everything that he had ever been taught about their inferiority to monsters was true. They were mindless, aggressive things, good for nothing but an energy source. Why had Sullivan ever defended that kid was beyond him. Surely it was out of spite. _That big jerk just couldn't bear to see me succeed. He just had to stay in the lead, even at the cost of science. That imbecile. I'll fix him. I'll find a way back and I'll show everyone that I was right. Waternoose thought he was giving the orders, but the machine was my idea. The old fool had no idea I was playing him the whole time. I'll get back there and I'll show everyone. Sullivan will pay._

He stewed over the thoughts in his mind as he lumbered up the hill away from the highway. He was in a large city, that was obvious. The buildings were taller here even then most of the ones in Monstropolis. He looked for sunny spot away from cars, and away from human foot traffic, as there were dozens of them out walking around, even this early. The sun was barely above the horizon. _They must all be endothermic._ The thought made him chuckle for some reason that he wasn't quite sure of. Before he approached the teeming city, he looked down to check his camouflage. He was shocked to see himself covered in a thick layer of mud and leaves. _How did that human not see me leave his truck?_ It was a mystery that would never be solved. He took a moment to writhe in the grass on the side of the hill to clean himself as best as he could. He got up, and dusted his scales off with his hands. He was still covered in a fine layer of dry, dusty Earth, but it was fine enough that he would be undetected if he lay low to the ground and didn't move too much once he found a spot to hide. He made his way to the edge of the city, across a small street, through the crowd of walking people, and to a patch of untouched concrete outside of a building that was shorter than the others around it.

This in itself was a small miracle, since he still couldn't see, even while squinting. Everything was so blurry, the humans were featureless, colorful bipeds; the building a solid red mass; and the concrete, a flat, glowing expanse of nothingness. The only reason that he knew that no one had walked there and that it was safe was that he could sense the warmth coming from it, and the warmth coming from all the other objects nearby. The humans all glowed very brightly, and left dim marks on the pavement where they walked and heated the ground beneath them. The cove where Randall was now settling was surrounded by untouched, cold concrete, and had a bright warm spot in the middle where the sun was coming through between the other buildings. He stretch out as much as he dared and made sure that he was still blended before letting his eyes close as he basked, careful not to fall back asleep. He felt grateful for the first time time since he entered this world, grateful for this one, figurative and literal, tiny bright spot in his morning.

He had not been laying there long, maybe a little more than half an hour, when something startled him. It was a human voice. "Hello there Mr. Scales. What are you doing there?" Randall jerked his head to make sure that he was still blended. When he saw that he was, he became confused. _Is it talking to me? How would it know that I'm here?_ He waited in fear to see what the creature did next. "This isn't the best place to bask you know? I know it's nice and sunny, but this is a loading dock, and if the store gets a delivery this morning, then you'll be squished. That would be a tragedy, loosing a pretty, scaly beauty such as yourself." Now Randall was very confused. She couldn't be talking to him, could she? And it was definitely a she, the voice was too high pitched and musical to be anything else. He was most certainly still invisible. _What the hell is going on here?_

The human female walked forward, until she was about two feet from him. Randall remained motionless, hoping that she wouldn't notice him if he didn't move. "Shh, it's ok little one. Don't be scared." She reached her hand out and picked something up from the ground. Randall squinted his eyes harder. He could just make out a small, greenish-brown thing in her hand. It was tapered at the end, and twitching. _A lizard!_ He realized. The human had picked up a tiny lizard that he had not even noticed basking just a few feet from him. _Is it a trick?_ He thought. _What is she going to do with him? Will she hurt him, eat him? Oh god!_ For a moment, he almost wanted to get up and take the lizard away from this sweet-talking human, before she could bash it in the head the way the other humans had done him. He stopped himself and watched in horror as the human carried the struggling lizard to a ledge on the side of the building. "This is a much better spot, no trucks here. See, nice warm bricks." She set the lizard down on the little ledge. "You be careful now, and good luck this winter." Randall could see enough to noticed that she waved goodbye to the lizard as she walked away and into the store that he was apparently basking next to. _That was unexpected._

Randall decided to take the girl's advice and search for a basking spot that was not in a docking bay. There was a metal awning above the store, it was not completely covered by sunlight by this point, but it would be in just a little while. He climbed the wall and got onto the awning and continued his basking. He did not close his eyes this time,but watched the humans moving below him. They looked so mindless, like a bunch of bipedal ants scurrying to and fro. They didn't look up. They didn't look at each other. They didn't do anything but scurry. What kind of animals were these? Creatures that shouted, hit, screamed, cursed, and mindlessly walked about, but somehow noticed and saved tiny lizards. He began thinking about the musical human female. She hadn't sounded like the others that he had encountered. She spoke clearly, and had a very pleasant voice. She had not only noticed a basking lizard all the way from the sidewalk, but had taken the time to move it to a safe location before continuing on her way. _Why, why did she do that? There has to be some motive, some reason. What would drive a human to do something like that?_

An hour later, he was no closer to an answer to his question when he heard her voice again. "Yes, ma'am. I'm leaving the store now. No, I told you I won't be back in town until this afternoon. No, I can't work on it from home yet; I have to at least get the preliminary sketch done in person. Don't worry about it, I'll have Carol with me. Oh, I'm thinking about going to the mall later. Yeah, yeah that one. Do you want me to get you something from Teavana? Yes ma'am, you got it. Ha ha, yes ma'am. I love you too, Mom. Yeah, I'll see you later. Okay, bye Mom, love you too. Bye." She was standing in front of the store holding a bag in one hand and a small, black object in the other. He realized that she had been talking over a phone. The thought saddened him for one, wistful moment. He remembered years ago, having similar conversations with his own mother. She had always worried about him so unnecessarily. He banished the memory from his mind. The human began to move away. _She helped the lizard earlier. maybe she can help me, in an indirect way._ He decided to follow her in hopes of being lead to a safe place to recuperate from his injuries, which had still gone uncatalogued. He needed to get to a mirror, a first aid kit, and a steady heat source to heal himself, or at least a source of warm water to get the rest of the dirt off of him first. He was a stranger in this world. He didn't know how it worked. He didn't even know what city he was in. He needed a guide, even one that didn't know he was there.

As he watched her path, he figured out that he could stay on the walls of buildings and above the human heads as he followed her. He would never be spotted if he stayed above them. It was true what he had observed before. Humans almost never looked up. He was glad of that fact, and one other thing. The human that he was following was easy to spot apart from the others. It was known in the monster world that all humans looked very similar to each other. Aside from a small variety of skin and hair colors, there was nothing unique about the way each human looked. They all had the same basic shape, the same basic face, and the same basic abilities. For this reason, all humans decorated themselves with highly styled and personalized clothes to tell each other apart and give themselves a recognizable identity. While most humans wore a conservative amount of colors or one bright color alongside something more muted, this one wore a very bold outfit, comprised almost entirely of the color black with bright crimson on her torso. Even her hair has black. From the back she was a solid black figure moving in a sea of blues, grays, browns, and pastels. She looked like a shadow to Randall's blurry vision.

He followed the black-clad human to what appeared to be a building populated entirely by cars. As she walked away from the mass of walking humans on the sidewalk, he could hear her singing to herself. He moved a bit closer to hear the song. He had never heard human music before. He didn't even know that humans had music. It was a mournful, lilting song about a woman who lost her love to a fight with a random stranger. It was beautiful to the ear, but words were so sad. Randall wandered what had inspired it. _Could it be that these things are more emotive than we thought? Or maybe it's a form of mimicry, something else wrote music long ago and humans learned to copy the sound. Did some intelligent species live here before humans did? I know there have been theories that humans have buildings and electricity because monsters lived in this world before humans killed them all and stole their homes._ This theory had never been proven, but Randall supposed it was possible, given the hostility he had seen since last night.

Randall followed her up to a small vehicle with two wheels. It was black and red, like it's owner's outfit, and had an attachment that looked like a chair with wheels coming off the side of it. She put the bag in this attachment and put what appeared to be a cross between a mask and a hat. _A helmet,_ he realized. It was a human version of a helmet. She sat astride the two wheeled vehicle and began to fiddle with the controls. Randall guessed that he wouldn't be able to keep up with her once she started traveling. He made up his mind to stay with her until he found a safe place. She seemed the only mildly pleasant creature around here. He carefully crawled into the side-chair-on-wheels, making sure not to disturb the bag that she set in the bottom of it. _Lead the way, Shadow._ He wandered where this adventure would take him next.


	3. Follow the Shadow

Once in a safe spot in the side-chair, Randall watched as the city began to move past him. While one of his eyes was still swollen almost shut from the previous night's beating, his vision had improved since dawn due to the ample light and his risen core temperature. The visual aspect of this particular city that stood out to him the most was that it was very shiny. Where buildings in the monster world were colorful and rather matte in finish, the buildings here seemed to be made of nothing but glass and polished metal. Beyond the shining buildings, there was an area of trees and smaller buildings which he guessed might be homes.

Aside from his vision and his limbs, his mind was beginning to move faster too, as the temperature in the air rose. He thought about his situation, being stuck in a strange world as an outsider. He was still furious at his rival back home for throwing him into this primitive place, but there was something else too. Randall had to admit that he was at least a little afraid of this savage world. Humans may be toxic as he had been taught, but they were very obviously dangerous and violent. Randall was sure that if humans were capable of thinking about such things, then they surely hated monsters or at least feared them for scaring them as kids. Randall was afraid that if the humans knew that a monster was in they're city, they would try to kill him just out of spite. _Except maybe Shadow,_ he thought, _she seems different from the others._ He quickly banished that thought from his mind. It wasn't prudent to dwell on ideas like that. He didn't want to like her. He just wanted to find a safe place to sleep and learn what he could through observation.

Randall decided to quit focusing on humans and take inventory of his physical state while he wasn't having to move on his own. He wished that he could get in front of a mirror. He was sure that his head looked awful. He knew that he was bruised from head to toe. He had several cuts on his legs and feet from walking in the dark through the swamp. He had a gash of undetermined depth on the scales next to his eye from the shovel. He was lucky that it wasn't an inch to the right, or he might have been blinded. He could feel the same knot in his stomach that had been there since he could remember. He knew that it was tied to negative emotions like anxiety, but he told himself that he didn't have time to focus on that.

 _Quit being a hatchling, Randall. You are stronger than that._ It was the same thing that his father had told him when he was young, and he had to repeat it to himself every now and then to remember. It usually worked. He pushed all the pain that he was feeling aside so he could focus on the world around him. Finding shelter was still the main priority. If Randall had to sleep out in the cold again, he might not be able to wake up if danger arose again. He looked up and saw that he was still in the city, but the buildings were shorter, and not as shiny as they were where he had been. He guessed that he had arrived in the center of the city, and this was somewhere near the edge. Soon, the shadow human pulled up to what seemed to be some sort of large complex with a border around it.

As soon as the vehicle stopped, Randall moved away from it so Shadow wouldn't touch him as she dismounted. He wandered what sort of place this was. Randall looked, and over the entrance of the complex read Zoo Atlanta. _The Zoo? Why would she be going to a zoo? Since when do humans even have zoos?_ He wandered what kind of animals would think to keep other animals in cages. _Focus Randall, it doesn't matter why they have it or why she's here. What matters is that you don't spend tonight out in the cold. Just follow her and learn what you can of the layout until you get to a safe place._ He watched his guide pick up the bag from the side seat and followed her up to the entrance of the zoo.

"Carol! Hey, what's up?" It was Shadow who spoke to a dark skinned human that was leaning on the wall near the gate. The darker one replied, "Fairy! What's up girl? Just waitin' on your slow ass to get here."

"Sorry about that, I got held up at the art store because I couldn't decide on the paper I wanted to use. And I asked you not to call me that. I sound like a guy that wears too much eye glitter."

"Whatever, Faye then, until I come up with something else." She rolled her eyes. "Come on, I've got him in the perfect spot for you. Did you decide what medium you're using?" The two humans began walking into the zoo, the dark one, Carol, holding up a badge as they walked though the gate. Faye _, hmm, is that what I should call you? No, you're Shadow. Definitely._ Randall snickered to himself as he slithered after them.

"I'm going with oil pastels, I really want to capture as much detail as I can, but as quickly as possible, without sacrificing color. If I had more time, I'd paint him, but not today."

"Yeah, I don't know why they won't give you guys more time on this stuff. But I guess it's the first year that we're doing it this time of year so there have to be a couple of things that are a little off. But they gave the artists a whole week last summer, now you have to come for one day, and make an appointment, what?"

"Well this isn't the same thing as what they did this past summer. That was way more publicized, and the proceeds went to the zoo. This is a new thing they're trying and everything goes directly to rebuilding habitats. They decided to make it like a competition. The artist has one day to capture the essence of a vulnerable or endangered animal of their choice, and for every dollar which that one work raises, the zoo will match it and donate to habitat builders in that region. We only had fifteen people volunteer to do it this year, so the higher ups don't know how well it's going to work. So we are making our pieces now, during the slow season, and they'll start advertising after the holidays. If we make more than 3,000 dollars, then they'll give it another go next year, but each piece has to sell for more than two hundred. The Art Gone Wild summer auction is still going to be a thing and they don't want to take focus away from it or make it look like this is just a copy of the same event."

"Yeah, okay, that makes sense. It's still pretty cool that they're trying this. I wonder how they got he idea."

"Who knows, probably one of the artists from last year had an idea and got in good with one of the directors."

"Probably something like that. How's your mom?"

"Same as ever, worried about me being in the city by myself. Speaking of which, I told her you would come with me to Lenox after the session. What about it?"

"Nah girl, I wish I could, but I promised Jake I'd watch Stacy this afternoon. He's finally got that interview you know?"

"Oh? That's awesome. Tell him I wish him luck. And say hi to Stacy for me."

"Will do. Ok, here we are. What do you think?" Carol gestured to a glass wall with a drawing table in front of it and a chair. Or at least, that was what Randall noticed first. Shadow was looking with rapt attention at something beyond the glass wall. Randall took a closer look. Inside the enclosure was a reptile. It was a muted grayish color with a hint of green in it's scales. It was big, not as big as Randall, but at least ten feet long. It stayed low to the ground, and it appeared to be unable to rise onto it's hind legs. It was turned so that from Randall's and the human's position, you could see it's entire body from the side. And it was eating something that smelled like meat.

"Oh wow, Carol! How did you get him to pose like that? It's perfect!" Shadow was clearly excited about this.

"Made sure today was his feeding day. Been planing this for a month to get him on the right schedule. I know, I'm awesome. He'll stay there and eat for the next hour without moving, should. That enough time for you? He probably won't move much after that either, gave him an extra portion to slow 'im down." The dark human sounded like she was very pleased with herself, but Randall could not make out her facial expression without getting too close.

Shadow moved from the wall and excitedly approached her friend. "Thank you so much, Carol, I owe you one." Shadow hugged the other human with the bag still in her hand.

"Ok, ok, I'm gonna let you get set up. You want me to stick around?"

"It's probably better if I work alone. I need to concentrate. You understand, right?" She sounded apologetic.

"No problem, chicka. You get in the zone. I'm expecting big things out of you." Carol winked, and cheerfully walked away. Randall wandered for a moment what she meant by that. What was going on here? Shadow went back to the glass wall and stared at the large reptile beyond it.

"You beautiful, beautiful creature. You magnificent dragon, you. You stay right there, and just be perfect. Just you wait, your portrait is going to make a bunch of other dragons very happy. This charity is going to be great." She smiled and went over to the chair that had been set up for her, sat down and began to sort through the items in the bag that she had been carrying.

Randall sat and observed, still unsure of what she was doing. He knew what a portrait was of course. But since when did humans of all things even have charities? Why would humans care about another animal's habitats? _Damn it Randall, none of this matters. Why am I even here? I should be looking for shelter, not watching some ridiculous human custom._ He clenched his fists at his own foolishness. Then he reminded himself that he did not know the layout of this city and it would be unsafe to just pick a spot at random for fear of being discovered while sleeping. _Remember the spot this morning. It seemed safe, but it really wasn't. You need to be patient Randall, wait for her to lead you to a safe place. It might even end up being her living quarters, and once you study her movements, you will be able to avoid her._ _Just be patient. Damn that big blue bastard! I can't wait to get back to Monstropolis. I'm gonna kill him. I'm going to skin him alive and put that big blue pelt on my floor so he'll be beneath the soles of my feet everyday. That will be fitting._ He almost chuckled to himself at the imagery in his head and the poetic justice of it.

Shadow was now staring intently at the lizard in the glass cage, and making quick movements with a pencil in her hand. Out of curiosity, Randall moved close enough to make out what she was going on the paper. He saw several isolated sketches of the enclosed reptile. She had captured each of his body parts separately on different parts of the page and was now tracing a proportionate outline of him as a whole. Randall was surprised to see that the sketches were very accurate, even though they had taken her less than a few minutes to do them. He shrugged it off and looked at the materials around her. There was a large board with a rectangle of thick paper clipped to it, and a box full of colorful rods that he guessed were the "pastels" that she had mentioned before. She hadn't even touched them yet. He realized with some amount of frustration that she would be sitting there for a while. He clenched his fist again, but reminded himself that he didn't have to stand there the whole time. He decided to take the opportunity to find a bathroom and a mirror, assuming humans were even sophisticated enough to have them. He remembered seeing a mirror in a child's room once, but it wasn't a common thing. He would just have to search.

He didn't have to search long, since he quickly realized that humans marked their facilities with similar icons to the ones that monsters used. He was relieved to find a lock on the door when he entered. He would be able to become visible without fear of being caught. He made sure it was secure, deblended, and approached the mirror. He was prepared for a sorry sight, but the extent of the damage still shocked him. As he had guessed, his right eye looked awful. The gash had to be down to the bone, given how thin his skin was on his head, and the whole area was swollen and bruised. His fronds were pale in color and drooping low to his head, and the one in front was also bruised. His legs were covered in scratches and dried blood along with the mud that he could not get off in the grass that morning. It was a miracle that no one had seen him. _Humans must idiotically unobservant. But that's better for me._

He didn't see any first aid items, but he knew that he needed to clean the wounds before they got infected. Reptiles were not known for their hardy immune systems. He began smelling the things on the sink counter. One was pink, and smelled sickly sweet. He didn't trust it. He picked up a clear bottle. It read Hand Sanitizer. It smelled like alcohol. _Perfect,_ he thought. It would hurt to use it, but it would kills the germs in his cuts. He decided to use it after he had gotten the dirt out. He was surprised to discover that humans used similar paper towels to the ones in the monster world. He turned on the faucet and hoped that humans were not so barbaric that they didn't have hot water. He was relieved to find that they did, but the faucets were switched, which annoyed him more than it should have.

He began the painful process of cleaning all the dirt out of such deep wounds. It was all he could do to keep silent as he did so, but he managed out of sheer will. It wasn't until he got to the deepest one on his head, the shovel wound, that he realized that he was going to have a problem. It had stopped bleeding the night before, but once he was done cleaning it, it would be open and bleeding again, along with a few others. The alcohol in the Sanitizer would only make the bleeding worse. He also couldn't afford to make make-shift bandages to stop it, or he wouldn't be able to blend effectively. He cursed and accepted the fact that there was no way around it. He would just have to improvise, keep to the shadows and hope that humans remained so stupidly unobservant.

It was about a half hour later when Randall emerged from the bathroom. He felt like his scales were on fire, and his jaw hurt from staying clenched for so long. _All I want to do is just find a place to sleep. Is that too much to ask?_ The strength of self pity in that thought almost made him want to cry out of sheer frustration. _Stop it you hatchling! This isn't helping. Focus! Damn you Sullivan. Damn you for doing this to me. It's all your fault. I hate you. It's your fault! Yours and Fungus, and Wazowski, and Waternoose. They're all pathetic. I'll kill them all, starting with Sullivan. I'll make them mourn the day they did this to me. Maybe I'll leave Fungus alive, just because._ He chuckled to himself again. It felt good to have something to focus on. Hate was easy, and it gave him strength.

He found Shadow still sitting where he left her, this time with the beginnings of a colorful image on the paper in front of her. He looked closer out of curiosity, careful to stay out of her line of sight, since two of his wounds were still bleeding freely and the red smears where he was wiping it away were most definitely visible. It was a masterful work, even as unfinished looking as it was. The creature had been captured almost perfectly in the drawing. It was going to be a very life-like image, but also exaggerated just enough to make the lizard look even more regal than he already did. There was almost a magical quality to the creature in the drawing, compared to the seemingly ordinary beast in front of him. _Is she doing that on purpose, or is that how she sees him? Whatever, it doesn't matter. She looks like she has another hour of work left, if the image is going where I think it is. I have until then to get the bleeding to stop._ He suddenly felt grateful that this human was being stationary for a time. He hadn't thought of needing it, his priority being shelter. But he needed to do this too, and this was a good opportunity for it. He went back to the bathroom, and got paper towels to press onto his wounds. He took a large pile of them and climbed to the rooftop of a small building where he could keep an eye on Shadow in case she moved before he was expecting her to.

Shadow's friend appeared an hour later, just as Shadow looked to be putting the final touches on her work. Randall was almost sorry that he couldn't see the finished piece from that distance, but he didn't want to get closer at the moment. He heard the humans talking, but didn't bother paying attention to what was being said. He did catch the words, "done already" and Shadow sounding pleased with herself, but he payed it no mind. He was busy burying the blood-soaked paper towels in the ground behind the building that he had perched on. He got back within sight of them just before they began to walk away together. He followed them. He followed them into another building, one where the inside looked like an office one might find in his own city. He watched from behind a flag as Shadow put her art work into a machine and take it out after a light flashed across it. Moments later, a copy of the image appeared in the drawer below. She rolled up the copy, and put a rubber band around it, and handed the original to her friend.

"Hope it makes it. Do you think people will like it?" Shadow asked.

"Are you kidding? You make him look like a dragon dragon! Like he's going to sprout wings and breath fire any second. He looks regal as fuck in this. Girl, they're gonna love it. I can't believe you got this much detail in two hours." The dark human raised the drawing in her hand.

"Thanks, Carol. I hope you're right. Sure you don't want to come with me?"

"Nah, chicka. I've got to get going here soon, and I still need to put this", she gestured to the drawing, "in with the others. I'll see ya 'round, Faye."

"Okay, see you soon. Thanks again." Shadow hugged the other one.

"Don't mention it. Ride safe." The darker human returned the hug, and the two humans parted, the dark one going deeper into the building, Shadow leaving and walking towards the entrance of the complex. Randall followed, confident now that he was clean, and no longer in danger of leaving a blood trail. He knew that the places that his color-changing scales were not covering were still visible, so he still stayed above human head level when he could, going across walls and staying in shadow when he couldn't. He took his place in the side-chair when Shadow got back to her vehicle and crank it to life, and off they went. The next place that she stopped was a single, enormous building with what seemed like hundreds of cars in front of it. She took the art supplies and copy out of the floor of the side-chair again before walking to the building. Randall wondered why she would need them again, until he realized that she was probably worried about someone taking them. _What kind of human would steal something so trivial?_ He spit the word, human, as if it were made of sewer water.

Shadow spent the next hour walking through the giant building, which Randall realized was shopping mall, ducking into stores to look at an article of clothing, only to duck out again without speaking to anyone. She made one longer stop at a store called Teavana, and bought a few different items. The rest of the time, she wandered around and seemed to be observing the other humans. Randall observed as well, and while they seemed to teem and scurry like insects, their behavior did remind him a little bit of the way monsters carried out their daily lives in his own city.

Shadow seemed enraptured by the movements of her own species. There was a period of time when she simply sat on a bench, eating something that registered as very cold, maybe frozen on Randall's heat sensors. As she sat, she turned her attention to specific individuals as they passed. Each time a new subject came and went, she smiled. Randall couldn't help but wonder what she was thinking. He carefully went behind the bench, hiding in the shadow of a large potted plant, and looked at them from her perspective.

First, he saw an older human who leaned over as he walked, surrounded by three scaring age humans. Each of them was noisier than the last and all clamoring for his attention. The old one smiled the whole time and held the hands of the two smallest ones while the other one chattered, walking in front of them. _He must be their grandfather. I didn't know humans got that old._ He had no idea what Shadow thought of them, but she smiled again, and waved to the little ones as they passed.

Next was two average sized humans, one with long hair and a much taller one. Randall could not tell how old they were, but they were obviously in love. The one with long hair was hanging all over the taller one and talking in an annoyingly high pitched voice. Randall could not really tell the tall one's gender, but it was obvious that the long-haired one was female. The taller one was silent, but kept it's hand around her waist like a child holding on to a toy that they didn't want to be stolen. _Either humans are strangely insecure about their mates, or those two are very young. Maybe both._ Randall felt disdain at the display that they were making, but Shadow seemed to watch them almost wistfully. Randall caught himself wondering if Shadow had a mate. He laughed at his own folly.

He heard mothers scold their children and couples laugh or argue. He saw groups of females all traveling together and laughing. For these groups in particular, it was very difficult for him to distinguish one individual from the other. And there seemed to be several different groups of varying sizes, all consisting of nothing but females. _So humans do that too. I thought only monster girls formed cliques._ Randall also noticed that every time a clique came by, Shadow's posture changed, as if they made her nervous. _Why would that be, if she's a female too? Unless she was rejected by them._ And an image of a child sized Shadow being laughed at by a group of identical girls and crying entered his mind. _What am I thinking? There's no way they're that complex. I'm reading too much into this._ He could not admit to himself that he reason he thought of that image was because of his own struggle as a monster child. Fitting in was always hard, and a part of him wanted someone else to have experienced the same thing. After a while, Shadow finally got up and began to leave the mall. On her way out, there was another female standing at a table just outside the entrance, handing out fliers for something. She called out as people passed.

"Conner Smalls is a criminal! Sign and save lives!" She said it repeatedly. Shadow paused, as if considering talking to her, then began to walk past. The other female put one of the fliers up in Shadow's face. It was clearly an aggressive act. Randall was surprised when Shadow's only reaction was to take the flier in front of her and stop in her tracks to look at it.

"You can't ignore it just because it's ugly." The other one said. "This is real, and Conner Smalls has to be stopped." Shadow just stood there, in the way of traffic, holding the flier. She was shaking, ever so slightly. The other one didn't seem to notice. "Well say something. If it really doesn't affect you than you're worse than him."

Randall got curious. He angled himself to look at the fliers that were sitting on the table next to the angry human. They were all the same picture, copied and printed. It was a gruesome sight of a four legged animal that had been severely mutilated. It was covered in blood and deep cuts and puncture wounds. One of it's paws was missing and it's tail was hanging on by a small thread of skin. The image made Randall's stomach turn. He was capable of inflicting pain on other monsters with relative ease, but a helpless creature in pain bothered him.

He thought of his machine, and how Fungus had looked after he had been subjected to it. Randall hadn't known that it was that strong, and if he hadn't been preoccupied with hating Sullivan at that moment, he would have been more bothered by the fact that he had almost tested the thing on a helpless human child when it clearly had more adjustments to be made. Now he did think about it, and he thought about the look of agony on Fungus's face. _I almost tortured that little human. I thought it was ready for subject tests. All the data came back safe, but it was too strong. If Sullivan hadn't of stopped me, what would have happened to that_ kid? He allowed these to thoughts to linger a moment before dismissing them. This was something he knew that he needed to feel the weight of, even if now was not the time. He shuddered and decided to deal with it later.

He looked back at Shadow. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the paper in front of her. Randall saw her open her mouth to speak, without moving her head up or looking away from the horrific image.

"Only a monster would do this." She said nothing else.

Randall was shocked. He had not heard any other humans speak of monsters. The man in the truck had called him a mutant, and the woman in the swamp had called him a gator. It was the fist time a human had said the word in front of him. _And now this human is saying that a monster would do this to an animal in the human world? It wasn't a monster that injured me like this! It wasn't a monster that almost killed me! It wasn't a monster that made me run in fear! It was humans. You things are terrifying! How can you say that? A monster would be too afraid to come to your world to do something like this._ Randall's inner rant was stopped suddenly by the angry human.

"There are no such things as monsters. You are just trying to dehumanize someone because they did something no human should ever do. But guess what. Humans do this kind of sick shit every day, because people like you don't want to face reality. You wanna bury your head in the sand, do your shopping, wear your leather coats so you look cool, which was once a beautiful animal too, I might add. And you don't want to do anything about the reality that people are doing this" she shook the flier in her hand, "every day. Wake up and do something. You think this guy is a monster, help me put him behind bars. Sign the petition to get him to trial and we can fight back." The angry human looked smug like she had just won something. Without hesitating, Shadow turned to face her. Something had changed. Shadow didn't look horrified. She looked furious.

"You have no right. You have no right speak to me or anyone else like that. Look at you. You're standing here yelling at strangers because you're just as useless as the rest of us. You're upset because some reject shoved this picture in your face and you can't do anything about it. You want to make a difference? Even if you get enough people to sign a petition and get someone like him into a courtroom, you have no control over whether or not he actually gets convicted. You know the system is corrupt, or you should, and you know he has enough money to get out of this. You want to make a difference? You want to help? Quit standing here with these graphic pictures where little kids might see them. These people don't want to help you. All you're doing is pissing people off."

The human with the fliers looked like she was about to interrupt, but Shadow did something odd. She snapped her fingers and held up her index finger in a single gesture while she said the word "No". In the same movement, she both stood up taller and leaned forward a bit, looking authoritatively into the other human's eyes. "You had your turn," she ordered. "You'll get another one when I'm done speaking." Her tone was very even and controlled. It sounded like it was taking a lot of will to make it so and keep from shouting. He other human's posture changed and she slumped just a little and looked down and away from Shadow's gaze before meeting it again. Shadow put her hand down and continued her impromptu lecture.

"Go help if that's what you want to do. Go join the police force and arrest the guys that do this. Go volunteer at the ASPCA and rehabilitate the survivors. Go talk to kids about non-violence, or better yet start a program that lets troubled teens work with abused animals. Or if you want to go global, do what I did this morning and and go to the zoo and make an artwork for their charity auction that sponsors habitats for endangered animals. You stand there and judge me for wearing a leather coat, and you think I don't care. You need to take a good long look in the the mirror, because unless you're a vegan that doesn't use glue and rides a bicycle with recycled rubber tires, I don't want to hear it." She stopped and stared the girl down. The human with the fliers was silent, with a look of shock on her face.

"Get out of here. Get the fuck out of here before I kick your skinny ass." The angry human looked like she might cry. "You don't wanna sign, fine. I don't need your crappy signature. We'll get someone on board that actually knows what the fuck their talking about. You weren't at any goddamn zoo. They don't even do that kind of thing. Zoos are prisons and they should be outlawed just like that ugly ass coat. Next time you try to lie to make yourself sound important make sure the person you're talking to isn't as ignorant as you are. Why are you still standing there, you like getting told off? I said get the fuck out a here. I don't want your help!" She pointed to the parking lot.

Shadow didn't say another word. She put the flier that she had been holding back on the table, at the top of the stack. Then she nodded her head towards the other human, smiled, and walked away. Randall was still processing what he had just witnessed when the two-wheeled vehicle was moving down the road. He was impressed with the way Shadow had carried herself when angry. She had forced the other human to listen to her, even though she was not scary or particularly intimidating. Even if it didn't work in the end, it was still interesting, and she hadn't lost her temper either. Randall would have to remember that move. What was more shocking though was the the thought that humans knew about monsters, but did not believe they existed. It floored Randall that any human would say that monsters weren't real, since a great percentage of them had been frightened by monsters as children for the past several hundred years. How could they possibly think that there was no such thing as monsters? It was such a puzzle.

Then, Shadow pulled over on the side of the street and stopped the vehicle. Randall moved away when he thought she would dismount. Instead, she took out the device that she had been talking into earlier and pressed a few buttons on it. She put it to her ear and waited a moment. _It must be some kind of cordless phone._ He thought.

"Hey mom. Yeah, yeah everything went great. Yeah, I think it's going to turn out great. Carol was really impressed with it..." She began pacing up and down the sidewalk as she spoke. "No, that's not how it works. The directors weren't there that day. No, Mom..." Randall could not hear, but it seemed that Shadow's mother kept interrupting her and talking for several seconds. "Listen, I'll be home in about an hour and a half, okay? No, I'm still in Atlanta... Because I went to the mall to get you some of that tea you like. No, no Carol isn't with me anymore... Because I'm riding home, and I just stopped to let you know I'd be on the road... Of course I'll be safe, you know me... Yeah... Mom... Yeah, Mom, I know. It's fine. Would you please not worry? I don't even speed." Shadow was pacing up and down the sidewalk in front of her vehicle, gesticulating as she spoke and looking stressed. Randall chuckled to himself. _Parents can have that effect._ He found himself sympathizing with her again, in spite of himself.

It was at that very moment, Randall heard a screech that sounded like the breaks on a car. Even in the human world, that sound was the same. He looked up at the same time Shadow did to see a large, green car swerving away from a smaller, silver one, right into the path of Shadow. She was still on the sidewalk, a few feet away from her own vehicle, now standing in the way of an out of control car. Forever after that moment, Randall would not be able to say what exactly was going through his mind at the time. He would come up with many different plausible rationals for his actions, but what it really boiled down to was sheer impulse. And that impulse was to dart forward and push Shadow out of the way of that car. He didn't have time to think. He just moved. And then his world went black.


	4. Goodnight Monster

First, he was aware of sounds. There was soft music, a low rumbling that could have been a animal's purr, a machine moving in a room nearby, and a faint sound that might have been fabric moving. Next came his sense of touch. He was warm, very warm. The heat surrounded him on all sides except his head and sank into his bones, making all his aches fade away. He was definitely still injured, and he felt more weak than he had yesterday. But the heat was a welcome blessing. It was like being back home, in his self heating bed, standard for most reptiles. As he slowly gained more consciousness he became acutely aware that he was not home. The sound of a purring animal unnerved him and he remembered that he was in the human world, and he had been following a human clothed in black. He had pushed her away from a car. _I was unconscious. The humans saw me! I wasn't blended! Where am I?_

He opened his eyes and tried to sit up. He was on his belly, so he raised his head and first pair of arms up, propping himself on the second pair. He looked around, startled and afraid of where he might be.

"Easy there big guy. You're alright." There came a soothing voice. Randall turned his head. A human with long black hair was leaning forward in a chair next to where he was laying. "It's okay. You're safe." It was a female's voice, and there was something familiar about it.

"Where am I, and who are you?" He demanded. "Why did you bring me here?" He was actively trying to sound as threatening as he could. The human moved back, slightly.

"So you can talk, it wasn't my imagination." She sounded breathless. "My name is Faye. You are at my house. I live alone and I brought you here to hide until I figured something else out. I'm the one that you pushed away from that car. Thank you for that." She paused.

"Shadow." He didn't even realize that he had said it out loud. "But how, why?" It dawned on him that she had saved him, and he had been at the mercy of a human. It embarrassed him as much as it angered him. "I have to go." He growled, and tried to get up, only to feel pain in his head and collapse back onto the surface that he had been laying on. He noticed that it was a bed.

"Hey whoa. It's okay. You're safe. Don't try to get up again, please. You hit your head and it knocked you out. I think you have a concussion. You know what that means, right?" She looked at him questioningly.

"Of course I know what that means. I..." Randall remembered that it meant that he shouldn't move for at least a day or more, until he got his strength back. "How do I know I can trust you, human?" He spat the word at her. "So far, all your kind have done is injure me."

"Is that what happened to you?" She sounded concerned. "I'm so sorry. I saw the cuts when I got you here, and didn't know where they came from. But I put some ointment on them so they should heal a bit faster now. And I bandaged the one on your head. But as for trusting me, I don't know. You saved me from the car, I felt like I had to repay you, keep you safe." Her kindness surprised him, but then he remembered the lizard that she helped when he had first seen her.

"You're the one that moved the lizard near the art store. Why do you help things that aren't even your species. Any other human would kill me. They already tried." Randall sounded very angry. He wouldn't even admit to himself that he was afraid. He had never meant to actually come in contact with this human, and here she was, hovering over him as he lay helpless.

"How did you know about that lizard?" She looked confused. "Never mind. Let me answer you. Give me a second." Faye sat back from leaning, and picked up a small square of fabric and two sticks off the floor. She set them on the table next to her and Randall guessed that this was where the rustling sound had been coming from. He still needed to know about the unnerving purring sound.

"while you're thinking, is there another animal in here?"

"Oh, yes." He voice was a little shaky, _probably from being nervous around a monster. Good._ "I have a pet cat. She's under the bed. Do you want me to move her?"

"No, it's fine. I just wanted to know." He was relieved that it was something as simple as a pet. He watched as Shadow remained still for several moments before speaking, keeping her eyes on him the whole time. Just as Randall was about to say something to keep from being unnerved, she drew a breath to answer.

"I understand that you've been hurt. I don't know where you came from. You know what humans are, but I'm guessing you haven't spent much time, if any near them. Your first impression of my race must have been horrible. And I can't imagine what you're feeling right now. But I need you to accept something, as hard as it might be. Not all humans are bad. We all have the potential to be, but some choose to behave differently than others. I helped the lizard because I wanted to. I like helping things. I am trying to help you for both that reason, and the fact that you saved me first. So now I am honor bound to make sure you're okay before I let you leave here. I want to help you, and get you well, but I can't do that if you fight me the whole time because you have a grudge against my species.

If you put yourself in my shoes, I don't even know what you are. I'm taking a leap of faith by trusting that you won't do something like get up and eat me in the middle night." Randall was about to make a defensive remark, but she put her hands up in a surrendering gesture. "What I'm saying is that we are both unknown to the other, and rather than cling to any suspicions we might have, let's try to be civilized and give the other one the benefit of the doubt until given reason to make a judgment." She paused. "Does that sound fair to you?" She made a face that Randall could not quite discern with his vision in the state it was, but her voice had a note of pleading to it, so he guessed that her expression matched.

He found that he was more calm now, so he took his turn thinking of what his answer would be. _She is well spoken, I'll give her that. But is it just pretty words, or does she mean it? If she's lying, how can I tell? Can humans be honorable, like she claims?_ _If I knew anything about their mannerisms, I could tell if she's bluffing or not, but I don't. This is so frustrating! Wait. I do know one facet of human nature very well. She said she's taking a leap of faith right? That she is afraid that I might eat her, as if I'd want to. Ich! But I'll be able to tell if she's telling the truth about being afraid or not. And if she_ _ **is**_ _afraid of me, than she'll be less likely to try to betray me as long as I keep an I on her. It's settled._

"I have one question for you, human. Come closer." He sat up all the way, so he would be at eye level with her. She still sat on the chair, and he saw her looking towards the door of the room. "I mean it, human, I..." He realized he wouldn't make progress if he lost his temper, and decided to try a softer approach, though it hurt his pride to do so. "I only want to see you. I don't like to admit it but my eyes aren't very good, and I need you to get closer so I can read your face when I ask you this." The touch of honesty worked, even if he didn't like it, and Faye slowly rose from the chair and knelt next to the bed, with her face just an inch below his, but still a good two feet away.

"Is this close enough?" She asked. He squinted, but it was still fuzzy.

"No, just a bit more. Please." It was making Randall very nervous to have a human this close to him. He was sure that it was leaking into his voice, but he had to see. She leaned in, closing the distance until he could make out the features of her face in perfect detail and he didn't have to squint to hard. "Stop" He held up a hand. "That's close enough."

"Then what do you want to ask me?"

Randall drew a breath and looked into alien eyes. "I need an honest answer to this, no matter what you think my reaction will be." He paused. "Are you afraid of me, human?"

He saw her eyes widen. They were an admittedly striking shade of blue. They reminded Randall of crystal or maybe ice. She looked down, and her pale, maple-wood colored skin turned pink on the sides of her face, below her eyes. The slender, dark patches of fur that served as eyebrows furrowed, meaning that she was thinking. She met his gaze again and bit her lower lip, which was a medium shade of brownish pink. She was nervous or maybe wasn't sure what to say, either one, but was she afraid? _Answer me._ He thought. Then she looked down again and her eyebrows slanted up, and her mouth opened just a bit. She looked unsure, like she was acutely aware that he was judging her reaction and was trying to hide something. _I knew she was lying._ He was about to try to escape with or without a concussion, but then her expression changed again. It was a look that, on a monster, would resemble defeat or resignation. She looked at him this time with a mix of emotions that he couldn't quite read.

"Yes. I don't want to be, and it's not fair to you, but yes. I'm afraid of you." She looked like she wanted to back away very quickly, but she remained, letting him study her face. _There it is!_ Randall could see that she was, indeed telling the truth. She was afraid of him. It actually surprised him. He wondered if she could see the fear in his eyes, but he doubted it. He must have made some sort of readable expression that Faye took to mean something she needed to defend herself against. She moved back just a little before stopping herself, and spoke again. Her tone was apologetic.

"I mean no insult. It's a part of human nature that I can't control, the fear of the unknown. You scare me only because I don't know anything about you. But I'm willing to try and over come that and give you my trust so that I can learn about you, and then maybe I won't be afraid. But I need you to be on the same page, or I can't do it." Her eyes begged him to understand, and she looked just as helpless as he felt. He decided to give it a try. _If she kills me anyway, then it will make no difference if I trust her or not. At least this way, there might be a chance._

"Fine, human. I won't fight you. But you should know that I am capable of defending myself, even when injured. You shouldn't be afraid because I'm 'unknown'. You should be afraid because I could constrict the life out of you without even trying." Her breath caught, audibly, and her eyes told him she was starting to rethink things. He quickly took it back. "I'm not going to do that, though. Not unless you give me reason to, understand? I said I'm not going to fight and I won't. You just need to know what you're dealing with."

"You're trying to scare me enough that I won't want the betray you." She said it in a very matter-of-fact way. He was surprised that she had called his bluff so easily. He would just have to convince her another way. "I get it. You don't have to trust me completely. That's what getting to know people is for. I appreciate your effort. Thank you."

 _That was unexpected._ Randall calmed down and figured that they had somehow come to a truce. "Fine then." He said, begrudgingly. _Where did this human get these ideas? Monsters don't talk like that. But everything she says makes sense. How? I'm going to have to study this thing._

"Yay." She smiled genuinely. "I'm going to get the other blanket out of the dryer. I'll be right back. Do you need anything? Water?"

He didn't like the idea of accepting anything she touched and consuming it, but he remembered that they were not actually toxic. Still, he had absorbed plenty of water back in the swamp and wouldn't need another drink until tomorrow. "I'm fine." He said. She stood in front of him and tilted her head to the side a few degrees. "Thanks." He couldn't read her face very well any more, but it looked like she gave him a pitying look, for what reason he couldn't tell. She left the room.

Randall rolled onto his back and sat up against the pillow behind him to look around. The room was small and painted a cool, grey color. There were several images hanging on the walls that held no context for him, but they did look interesting and at least weren't ugly. The furniture looked similar to what existed in the monster world. There was a dresser, a table, a lamp, and two floor to ceiling bookshelves with a soft lump the size of a blob-monster in front of them that looked like it would be comfortable to curl up in. The bed he was on was too short for him to stretch out on, but that would be expected, since she wasn't even close to half his length. He would just have to stay curled up.

He also noticed smells. The purring from when he woke up was explained when he sensed a feline odor coming from beneath him. _So she was telling the truth about that too._ The bedding smelled like artificial scents resembling some kind of flower. There was also a smoky scent that he couldn't place at all. It was very pleasant whatever it was, and soothing. _How smoke can be soothing, I may never know._ Faye came back into the room holding a large bundle that was radiating heat and Randall noticed that the blanket that had been covering him was much cooler than it had been when he first woke.

"Is that for me?" He asked, imagining the heat enveloping him.

"Yep." She said cheerfully. "Just let me take this one off the top and I'll trade you." She pulled the blanket away, and for a moment Randall felt his temperature start to drop. Then all was well again, and the space around him glowed in his heat vision, if you could call it vision. He settled into his spot and began to relax, just a little bit.

"How are you heating the blankets? They cool down after a while, so it's not a power source is it?"

"Well, they do make electric blankets that can heat themselves, but I don't own one. I've been alternating these two for the past two hours, one in the laundry dryer, the fresh one in here. The dryer uses heat to dry clothes, so it can also be used to heat already dry clothes. You learn that one if you ever spend a winter in the country without propane."

Randall wasn't sure what country she meant, or what propane was, but he had a more pressing question in his mind that took precedence. "Human, I have to ask, how did you know that I needed an external heat source?" It was itching his mind because he had no guess.

"Well, you're obviously reptilian, whatever you are, and I know that reptiles can't heat themselves internally. You were freezing cold when I got you here. The bike doesn't exactly have a heater on it. So I tried to get your temperature up as fast as I could. To answer your question better, I've never met a talking reptile before, but I did have a pet snake in high school. I studied reptilian immune systems and metabolics so I could take better care of her. Let me put this one back in the dryer and we'll talk some more in a minute." She left and was back again after some clanging sounds in the other room. "Where were we? Oh! Before anything else, I've got two questions for you. One, I told my name, it's Faye. It means fairy. But what's your name? And what did you call me when you woke up? You sort of whispered it."

Randall was embarrassed to find that he had said her nickname out loud, but he knew that keeping communications open with this creature was more important than his pride. He could get away with snapping and yelling at monsters like Fungus, because they wouldn't talk back to him. He was feared and respected back home. But he had to remind himself that he didn't know how the human would react if he yelled at her too much. He had to try and control his temper, possibly for his own safety. He took a deep breath, and collected himself.

"My name is Randall Boggs, and I'm not from this world." He paused to gauge her reaction. The human remained expressionless, except for a 'continue speaking' posture with her head inclined. "As for what I said when I woke up, I started following you after you left the art store. I was basking in the same place that the lizard was, and remembered your voice when you came out. It's pretty distinctive, kind of musical, in comparison to most of the voices around here." He hoped that she didn't read too much into the statement. He hadn't meant to complement her. "The only way I could recognize you from a distance was the fact that you appear to be solid black from behind, your hair blends in with your clothes and you look like a three-dimensional shadow..."

"Shadow!" She smiled. "Is that what you called me?" She giggled then. Her laugh was light, airy, and just as musical as her speaking voice. "I kind of like it. Shadow..." She said it with an edge to the sound and leaned to the side while she moved her hands back and forth on a flat plane near her chest. Randall guessed this was some sort of meaningful or cultural gesture and it probably had some kind of connotation to it, but it was lost on him. He did notice that she had interrupted him, and laughed. _I don't think I like that._

"Yes." He said bluntly. "I called you Shadow. I was going to say, before you interrupted, that I'm not sure that I'm going to keep using it. I'll call you Faye, since that's your name. Happy?" He glared at her.

"I'm sorry if I offended you. Really." She looked crest-fallen. "I just think it's a cute name." She looked at him as if expecting a reply. He gave none, except a short, low frequency growl. "Look, you can call me whatever you want as long as it's not just, 'human'. Okay? I think Shadow works fine. Do you want me to call you Randall? Or do I get to pick a nickname too?"

 _She's trying so hard to get on my good side. That's obvious. I just wish I could trust that it's genuine. No. It doesn't matter, Randall. Your brain must to really fucked up. You've been in a daze all this time. Did you forget already? You don't need to be her friend. You need to get well so you can get home and fix everything, destroy that blue idiot and get the machine fixed. Just humor the thing and make her think you're her friend until you can escape._

"Shadow it is, and call me what you want, but Randy and Lizard Boy are off the table." Those two names still hurt him to this day.

"Would 'Scales' be offensive?" She asked sheepishly. Randall chuckled despite himself.

"That works, hu... Shadow." He squinted, and saw that Faye was smiling.

"Good. So, can I ask you a question?"

"You just did." He chuckled again. He was feeling better now that he had a goal.

She giggled in response. "I was wondering. You seem to know what humans are. But I've never heard of anything like you before. You said that you're not from this world, so how do you know about humans, and what exactly are you?"

Randall didn't speak for a few moments. He needed to calculate this answer. _If humans don't believe in monsters, then they somehow don't know about scaring, which seems absurd, but it does follow. If she doesn't know about monsters and scaring, then she probably won't like it if I tell her about it now. She might even throw me out, and it's cold out there. Maybe I'll tell her as much truth as I can, but give her an abridged version. It'll be easier than making something up. Okay._

"In the simplest of terms? I'm a monster. From what you said yesterday when you saw that flier, I can tell that the word, monster has a really dark connotation here. But that's what my kind call themselves. There are no humans where I come from, the monster world, just like there are no monsters in the human world. But where I come from, the word human has the same feeling attached to it that monster does here. That's why I find it hard to trust you." It was all true, for the most part.

"Wow. So how did you get here? How do you speak the same language as me? How do monsters live? Is it similar to the way humans live, or completely different? How did stories of humans and monsters get across the worlds to make fear in either race? What do the other monsters look like? Are there different kinds? Are they are reptiles like you? What do monsters believe about humans that make us so scary? Do you want to share legends? Maybe that's a bad idea. But I've got some great monster stories. Do you think our idea of monster is related to the inhabitants of your world? Or is it coincidence? Do you..."

"Shadow, calm down." Randall threw up all four of his arms to get her attention. She hushed. "Gees I didn't think you'd be that excited about it. Look I've got a few questions for you too. Mostly involving where I am, how I got here, and what happened in the city, among other things. So how about this. You ask me one, I'll answer the best I can and then I'll ask you one. Fair?" He shivered as he opened his hands in a welcoming gesture.

"Fair, but let me trade your blankets again." She got up and brought in the new, hot blanket, and Randall almost purred when she gave it to him. He decided on his first question when she got back from loading the cold one.

"What temperature is it in here? The air feels colder than it should indoors."

"Are you cold? It's 65 degrees. I thought about turning the air up, but I decided not unless it's absolutely necessary. My heater is electricity powered, but this is an old house. I can barely afford this temperature on an artist's earnings. I'll turn it up if you need me too. I don't want to be stingy. But then I run the risk of not being able to afford food. If I can find my heating pad, that should make things easier. Do you think you can last like this until I do?"

"Your what?"

"Well, I don't own an electric blanket, but I do have a cloth pad big enough to make a difference if I put it under the blankets with you. Now that you're up and I don't have to keep such a close eye on you, I can keep looking for it."

"If you don't mind me asking, what does an endothermic creature need with a heating pad?"

"The extra heat helps with muscle soreness. Makes cramps and aches go away."

"Oh, okay, got it."

"That was your first question. Now for mine. Can you tell me how you got into this world?" She listened as she rummaged through the room, looking for the heating pad.

Randall thought about the best way to answer. Explaining his job, his plan, and the doors of closets was going to be tough without mentioning what his job was or the fact that human children were involved.

"First, I guess the most important thing is that there are portals in the shape of doors that allow travel from the monster world to yours. There is a door in our world that matches a door in yours. When activated, a monster can go through. But they only work from the monster side. Humans open the doors in your world, and they are just normal doors that go to wherever that door leads in your world..."

Shadow spoke before he could continue. "Doors, like everyday, man made doors? And you have counterparts in your world that match them? That's weird. Why would monsters have portals to our world if they are afraid of us?"

"Would you listen and not interrupt?" Randall snapped. This was the second time that this silly human had interrupted him, and it was getting on his nerves. He immediately regretted his outburst when she gave him a look as if he had physically hit her. "Look, I'm sorry for yelling. Just... I'm getting there. Don't waste another question until it's your turn again. Okay?"

"Yes. I'm sorry for interrupting." She looked so hurt. It almost made Randall angrier, but he decided to ignore it. _I have to be careful. She may have acted wounded this time, but wounded animal can be vicious. Don't do that again, Randall, whatever you do._

"Anyway, only the bravest, most highly trained monsters go through them, and they only stay minutes before they go back. There is a really valuable resource that exists in your world and doesn't exist in ours. The monster activates the door, goes through, takes the resource, and goes back as quickly as possible. I can't tell you what this resource is, but it's essential to our survival. We've been gathering it for over four hundred years, and the process is so carefully monitored that there has never been a human security breach.

"I was one of the monsters trained to do this job. I was actually one of the best. I was in the running to break the all time highest number collected. But I was also working on something, a machine that would revolutionize the industry and make it so that risking safety and security by going through the doors would be a thing of the past. I was this close, this close," he held his fingers almost together in the air in front of him, "to finishing my work and making history.

"But I had a rival, this big blue moron who only thought about doing what the higher ups told him to. He wanted the glory of breaking the record for himself. He got in my way, accused me of cheating, sabotaged my machine, and destroyed my work. He didn't even know what I was planning, didn't stop to ask. He just tore it up to spite me. I wanted to kill him. I still do. Anyway, he stole the one, last thing that I needed to finish my machine. And when I tried to get it back, he and his geeky green mascot trough me through one of the doors and deactivated the portal on the other side before I could get back through. Now I'm trapped. I can't get back through until I can find a way to get to an active portal. But I don't know how I'm going to do that. No monster that's ever been banished has ever gone back. Whether that's because they just couldn't find a way or because they got killed, no one knows. That's my answer. That's how I got here. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I do. I don't know what to say except that I've got a lot more questions now. But it's your turn to ask, so I'll wait."

Randall was almost glad that she didn't give him pity or make some comment when he told her he was stranded. He wouldn't have liked it. He was about to ask his next question, but he realized that recounting his banishment, even in watered down terms, had taken a toll on him. He suddenly felt uneasy and tired at the same time. He yawned and then growled, trying to snap out of it.

"Don't fight it, Scales. If you're tired, then we can pick back up in the morning. I found the pad. Let me plug it in here... and there we go. This goes under here, put it where you're going to get the best benefit. There you go. Now, I'll go get the other blanket and put it on top of this one so you'll be better insulated." Without another word, she walked away. Randall couldn't help but notice that her movement was oddly graceful for a creature with only two legs. _How do bipeds do it?_ He thought, amused by his own mental ramblings. Shadow came back, gave him the blanket and offered water another time. Randall refused. He would have protested being put to bed in that manner, but he was too tired to argue. His head was throbbing and all he wanted to do was drift away. She told him good night and flipped the light switch on the way out. _Tucked into bed by a human. What's my life coming to?_ And he fell into a heavy sleep.


	5. Eggs and Needles, Good Morning Human

Randall awoke rather suddenly. He jerked upwards, but instantly regretted the sudden movement, and lay back on the bed. He looked around the room. It was light outside, but Randall couldn't tell what time of day it was because the curtains were drawn. _Those aren't my curtains._ Then he remembered with an inner groan that he was in the custody of the human. He still didn't like it any better now than he had before. _Damn, we did come to a truce, didn't we. If it behaves, then I guess I will too._ He looked at where Shadow had been sitting.

His eyesight was better than it usually was when he woke up. He could tell that the thing sitting on the chair was the bolt of fabric and he could make out the two sticks that he had noticed her put on the table last night. _What are those?_ He wondered. _And why can I see them so clearly? And why do I feel like this?_ Randall had noticed that he felt very restless, like he was filled with energy that could not be released. It dawned on him that it was the heat. He was still wrapped in the blankets Shadow had given him, and the heating pad was on underneath them. He had been kept warm long enough that his body was telling him to release some of his energy.

He decided to go find Shadow and ask where he could find some food. He slowly began to rise from the bed. He was surprised to find that his core temperature remained the same when he got out of the blankets. _I must be getting better._ At full health, it was no problem for Randall to maintain his core temperature once it had reached a certain point. That was how he still managed to get around Monstropolis and do his job even when it was cooler out. As long as he kept moving, his temperature would stay the same. Nevertheless, it was still cold, Randall was still in poor condition. He took the bottom blanket and wrapped it around himself for comfort. _Didn't she say that it was 65 degrees in here? If that feels this cold to me, I must not be as healed as I had hoped. I should be comfortable right now._ He sighed to himself. _Don't worry about it Randall. Just focus on food for now._

Randall slowly left the room that he had slept in, and found himself in a short hallway. He could hear soft, pulsing music. He decided to follow it. The next door down from the one he came from was open, and Randall could see into a modest living room. What Randall saw next, surprised him. Shadow was standing on a mat on the floor, on only one foot. She remained this way for several seconds before lowering her foot to the ground away from her, and leaning into it, shifting her weight gradually while making a graceful, sweeping gesture with her arms. She was now standing with one foot behind her, the front knee bent, both arms stretched out, both in the direction of the leg they corresponded to.

She continued moving like this, very deliberately. Randall had never guessed that humans were capable of such graceful movements. She seemed to move to the music and there was an energy of calm around her. The beauty of it surprised him, but what surprised him more was how familiar it looked. _Is she doing what I think she's doing?_ It looked familiar, like an Asian art form that he had studied years ago, but the movements were different. _No way, human's couldn't know how to do that. They would have had to have learned it from monsters, wouldn't they?_

"What are you doing?" He asked the question softly. For some reason, he seemed to care about not startling her. _Go figure that one out._

"It's called Tai Chi. I'll be done in a minute." She replied without missing a beat. _That's definitely not the name of what I was thinking of, but it does sound Asian inspired. Hmm._ Randall, watched fascinated as she finished her forms. _How do they balance without a tail?_ He had practiced a long time before he could balance on one foot with ease, but he had his tail and lengthy body to counterbalance the awkward position. This creature was so simply built, and yet she was balancing and moving with such grace. She looked like she could have been a serpentine monster. _But she's not, so quit thinking like that._ He was surprised at himself.

Shadow eventually stopped the ritual and stood up straight. She turned to look at Randall, but she was too far away for him to see her expression very clearly.

"You're up earlier than I thought you would be. Should you be moving so soon?" She sounded both concerned, and almost chastising. Her tone annoyed Randall. She was being too familiar with him, and she sounded like a parent.

 _Who does this human think she is? I'll show her what her place is if she doesn't cut that out! I'll bite her head off... Wait Randall. Remember your temper. If you scare her too much, she might hurt you or worse. You have to keep remembering that. Diplomacy has been working. Just keep it up a while longer._

"I am perfectly capable of determining my own fitness, thank you." He allowed some curtness enter his voice, just to get the message across. Her shoulders lowered in response, and the heat increased on the surface of her face.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that." She sounded flustered. "I was just concerned, that's all. Please don't be angry?"

 _Was I too harsh anyway? I didn't think so. She must be extra sensitive to tone or something like that. I don't know well I can control it if that's the case. Damn this ridiculous creature... It's okay, just try to be patient._

"It's fine." Randall tried to speak evenly. "I'm just frustrated, and still don't feel well. Thanks for the concern." His lame excuse seemed to work, and Shadow straightened again and took a step forward.

"Would you like some breakfast since you're well enough to move?"

"Yes." Randall felt his eye widen and head lift involuntarily. As hesitant as he was about eating human food, he had to admit that he felt hungry. His stomach was telling him that breakfast was a wonderful idea, and he couldn't bring himself to argue.

He followed the human into the next room and watched as she opened a cabinet and looked through it. _This must be a human kitchen. Weird, it looks a lot like my kitchen back home. That sound though... the appliances don't make the same noise. Come to think of it, nothing does. All the things that would be scream powered have a different sound to them, even the lights. It's almost a whine. I wonder what that means. Maybe I can ask her about it._ Randall became curious enough about a scientific question that for a moment, he forgot that he didn't want to care about anything in this new world.

"So, I just realized, I have no idea what you eat. Are you omnivorous, carnivorous, an insectivore? I know there's meat of some kind in there somewhere because your teeth are so sharp." The human was looking at him while rummaging in what he had to assume was a refrigerator. It registered as room temperature to him from the outside, but cold air could be sensed flowing from the open door.

"Well, you're right about the teeth." Randall chuckled. It seemed such a silly observation, however true. "I'm technically omnivorous. In my world, I know I can eat just about anything in a pinch. But I prefer meat, cooked on the rare side." Randall didn't mention the fact that the best thing for him was fresh, raw meat. It was very rare for reptiles living in the city to have access to hunting space, and the concept was pretty sickening to most monsters. It was a social rule that Randall and other reptiles didn't talk about it much. "Out of curiosity, what do humans eat?"

"Humans are totally omnivorous." She continued looking in the refrigerator as she spoke. "We need protein to live, but plant proteins work just as well as animal ones. Our diets are mostly based on taste and preference, some are more meat heavy, some are strictly vegetarian, some are just really lazy." She hummed a laugh.

"You sound like a textbook. Is that normal?" Randall was curious.

"Oh," heat flared in Shadow's cheeks. "No, I just get talkative when I'm nervous. If I get really long winded, let me know." She continued to rummage. "I've got some eggs. I can cook them if you want or you can just have them."

"Eggs? What kinds of eggs?"

"Chicken eggs?" She spoke as if the answer were a question, then continued. "Culturally, if someone says 'eggs', chicken eggs are what they mean. It's really rare to be eating any other kind. Wait, do you have chicken's where you come from, the monster world? I didn't even think of that." She closed the fridge door and carried a narrow, cold box over to the counter in the center of the room. "You can sit here if you want." She gestured to the stool that sat next to the counter.

Randall spoke as he approached the stool. Hearing her talk about the monster world so casually unnerved him. "Yes, we have chickens, but we also have other stuff. It sounds strange, hearing you ask about it casually like that." _Come to think of it, it kinda sounds weird just talking with a human in general_. "You said that you were nervous though, so how do you sound so nonchalant?" Randall immediately regretted his question, afraid that he would offend her or make her think he was offended. He thought about taking it back, but she spoke before he could explain himself better.

"I guess I'm more comfortable with the concept of two worlds than I thought." She sounded surprised. "Sorry, like I said, I know I talk to much." She didn't stand still to talk. She walked around the kitchen, taking things off shelves and out of cabinets and putting them on the counter. "I mean, yeah, it still feels weird to think there's a monster in my house, but after sleeping on it, I feel like I can talk about it and ask questions without too much hesitation. I can tread a bit more carefully if you're still that uncomfortable though." She paused to look at him.

"No, it's..." Randall tried to come up with an answer that didn't make him sound weak. "Talk how you want. I was just surprised, that's all. Is it normal for humans to accept new concepts so easily?" He thought about if the roles were reversed and a human were trapped in the monster world. No monster would be comfortable talking to it, not any time soon.

Shadow actually slumped her shoulders at his question, and began moving again, more quickly. _What did I say?_ "That's the second time you've asked about what was normal. I should tell you, I'm not a very good judge of what's considered normal and what isn't. I guess, generally, if it's me your asking about, the answer is probably no. Keep asking though, it you really want to understand something. I'll tell you to the best of my knowledge, okay?" She put a skillet on what must have been a stove and continued working. "As for accepting concepts, I think it's one of those things that gets easier the more you do it. So, it depends."

 _She seems so agitated. Just how different from other humans is she._ He thought of her reaction to seeing the clique of girls at the mall. _Maybe I wasn't that far off when I thought she had been rejected by them._ "Shadow?" He said her nickname tentatively. It still felt strange to address her like he might address a monster, wrong somehow. "Yeah, Scales?" Randall paused at the mention of his nickname. He had almost forgotten it. He shrugged it off. "Do you not get along with other humans? You seemed to like that other one, at the zoo."

Shadow stopped moving. She looked up from the skillet, which was now making a sizzling noise. "That's right, you followed me the other day. I didn't ask you about it before, but now seems as good a time as any." She sounded upset. It made Randall nervous.

 _What will she do if she gets too angry? Will she throw me out? Should I try to change the subject? Damn, this thing is so frustrating. She needs to quit stressing me out like this. I have to get back home. Damn Sullivan, I'll kill him for putting me in this fucked up place with these..._ He couldn't think of the word he was looking for and the pause gave him a moment to try and calm down. _Just wait Randall, she hasn't done anything to break the truce. Try to be patient, just until you're strong enough to leave. Listen, and answer her questions. Humor the thing until you find a way home. You can do this._

"So, here's what I want to know. One, why did you follow me? What were you planning to do? I know it wasn't your plan to jump in front of a car for a human, since you've made it clear how little you like them. For that matter, why did you save me?" She sighed. "Look, I'm sorry I sound so agitated. I'm sure you think I'm unpredictable, and I'd be nervous if it was you talking like this. I'm not upset with you, I don't think. I'm just stressed, and I can't stop thinking about this question. It's been nagging at me. I'll give you your answer first, okay?

The truth is, I don't usually get along well with other people. I talk differently and I don't know how to fit in. I say things that other people wouldn't think of, and for some reason, they don't like it. I've been told I'm a know-it-all, or that I'm awkward, or confusing. The girl at the zoo was Carol, and she has been one of my few friends since we were in high school. She wasn't popular either, but she was way more outgoing then me. She helped me communicate with the people I didn't understand, and introduced me to most of my other friends that I had at the time. On my end, I'm far less impulsive than she is, and I helped reign her in when she wanted to do something reckless. She might have gotten in a few really bad scrapes if she hadn't listened to reason." She paused to smile.

"We were good foils for each other. But that doesn't happen much. Carol is different, but most people don't seem to like me very much, and I'm not particularly fond of other people. I'd rather just make my art and let that do my talking for me, and stay in my studio where I don't have to deal with people that don't get it." She looked up and walked over to the counter where Randall was sitting. He realized that she was carrying two plates with fried eggs and some sort of brown, square objects on them. He hadn't even noticed that she was done cooking. "Oh, I just went on a bit of a rant didn't I? Now you know, I'm not always as even tempered as I was when you woke up the first time."

Randall was surprised to hear himself chuckle. "Actually, I've heard you rant one other time. Your temper flared up when that other human ambushed you, leaving the mall. I can't predict what will start a rant, but I'm beginning to think that that's all you do when you're angry. I've seen other humans do much worse." A sickening feeling welled in his stomach. "Me on the other hand, I'm dangerous if I loose my temper." He paused to gauge her reaction. He continued when he saw just enough fear to be satisfied. "But we still have a truce, so you shouldn't worry too much about that, and I'll do the same, right?" She nodded. He picked up the fork that she had placed next to the plate, and eyed the eggs. "These look really different from the ones in my world. You're sure they're from chickens?"

"Ha ha, yes, I'm sure. Try them, and if you don't like them, I can make something else." She looked at him expectantly. Randall picked up a bite looked at it nervously before hunger took over and he actually put human food into his mouth. _What?_ His eyes widened. They tasted like the eggs back home, if prepared differently than he was used to. But they were good! He promptly devoured the remaining eggs on his plate and the brown squares, which he found to be toast. He looked up at the human. She was smiling. "I hate to ask, but..."

"Sure there are more of them, how many do you think you can eat?"

Randall ignored the fact that she interrupted him again, too focused on the prospect of more food. "I could probably handle at least four, but you only ate one, so I'm guessing those are supposed to last you a while?"

Shadow shrugged. "Don't worry about it. You want to have the whole box, you can have them. You need them more than I do. So how do you want them, same way or something different?"

Randall contemplated the generous offer. He decided he didn't need to be polite and refuse, he needed to heal as quickly as he could. He made up his mind. "Actually, if you really don't mind, I'd like to just eat them the way they are."

"You mean, raw?" She looked confused.

"Is that a problem?" He sounded angrier than he meant to. He wouldn't admit that he felt so defensive about it, but mammalian monsters had always given him a rough time when it came to raw food. He remembered that Shadow's casual speech with him was just a facade. She was still afraid of him. He watched her shrink back, then steal herself again.

"There's no problem, Scales. I was just surprised, that's all. You eat whatever you need to so you can heal, anything but me or my pets." She grimaced at the last sentence. "Okay?" She handed him the egg carton.

Randall was taken aback. "I wouldn't eat you. You're a human, and humans are..." he paused to search for a word that wouldn't upset her.

"Toxic?" Her expression was unreadable.

"Well, not really, that's a myth, but... Wait, how did you know that?" Randall didn't remember mentioning anything about the belief that humans were toxic. _Will she be offended?_ He wondered.

"That's what you said when I was bringing you home. You probably don't remember. I'll tell you about it when you're done eating, but right now I'm going to get the med kit out. Meet me in the bathroom when you're done. Okay?"

Randall nodded, at a loss for words. He looked at the eggs when she left, relieved that she wasn't going to watch him eat. _Huh, they taste like chicken eggs, but why are they white, and so smooth? I wonder if all the food here looks so different. Oh well, here goes nothing._ And with that, Randall proceeded to pop eggs into his wide mouth and swallow them whole. He considered leaving one left, but decided that since the human had offered, it wouldn't be wrong to take all of them. _Besides, it's not like she's a monster, it's not the same._ Randall felt comforted when he reminded himself that he didn't have to think of Shadow like he would a monster.

He turned from the kitchen to look for Shadow in the bathroom. A wave of dread came over him as he thought about getting patched up again. He had been successfully ignoring the pain he was in until now, but thinking about it made everything come back into focus. His vision blurred, more so than it already was normally, and he did his best not to grimace as he came into the room where Shadow was.

"There you are. Now, I know it's going to hurt, but I need to clean your cuts again, change the bandages, and I think the one over your eye might need stitches. I wanted to do it before, but I didn't want to try without your say so, since I didn't know how it would affect your scales."

Randall sat down, growling. "Just get it over with hu... err... Shadow." He stumbled over his own words when he remembered what she had said about calling her human. _Remember your temper, Randall. Try to be patient with her._ "Sorry, just do what you need to do, if it needs stitches, then that's what it needs." He braced himself for the inevitable pain to come.

Faye picked up something from the counter, two somethings, and held one over the other. Then Randall sensed an intense heat signature coming from above one of her hands.

"What are you doing?"

"Sterilizing the needle."

"How? Where is that heat coming from?"

Faye turned to look at him and the heat disappeared. "You mean you can't see what I'm holding? You really do have bad eyesight. I wonder if it's the same for Adrian." She said the last part as if talking to herself.

"Who's Adrian? And my eyesight is none of your business." He felt like yelling the second statement. Maybe he did, he wasn't sure.

"I'm sorry, Scales, no offense meant. Lot's of reptiles have poor eyesight. I'm guessing that's where your heat sense comes into play. You do have heat sense, right? That's how you knew about the lighter?" She held up the object that had created the heat source. "Oh, and Adrian is my pet snake. I keep her in a spot where the cat can't get to her."

"You're right about the heat sense. I might tell you more about it later. So the lighter, that's what you called it, its makes a flame right?" _She keeps a reptile as a pet? I'm not sure how I feel about that._

"Yeah, that's what I'm using to sterilize the metal needle. Just give me a second."

She turned the lighter back on and Randall looked away from the dreaded needle. The bathroom was small, and most of the items were cold, the kind of cold that ceramic or metal items held even in normal temperatures. There was one heat source, a vent on the floor, blowing warm air into the room. The air smelled like soap and sandalwood. The last thing that he noticed was a mirror on the wall next to him. He wanted to get up and look into it, but he would wait until the human was gone. He didn't want her to see him when he saw himself. Then he heard a rustling like a plastic wrapper being opened.

"What are you doing now?"

"I'm opening a pack of swabs. I'm going to dip them in alcohol and use them to get into that cut over your eye. It's pretty deep, so I need something long and slender to get in there and make sure its totally clean before I sew it up."

"You sure seem to know what you're doing. Are you a nurse or something?" Randall was actually curious. Then he saw heat rise in Faye's face. _I saw that before. What does it mean?_

"Um, no, actually... I'm not a nurse or anything. I make art for a living. The first aid stuff is... well, medical care is expensive and... well some humans are more accident prone than others." There was a certain strain to her voice that Randall hadn't heard before. Then he realized why she was stumbling with her words a had lost her usual eloquence.

"You're embarrassed!" He almost laughed at his realization.

"Oh... just sit still so I can clean this okay?" Now she sounded annoyed. Randall was about to yell at her when she jerked back. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to snap at you. Don't get mad, please? I'm just... um...

 _Right, she has a temper to control too. She must actually be trying. I wonder if it's because she's still scared of me._

"Easy, Shadow," he threw up both sets of hands, "I'm not mad." _Anymore._ "And I didn't mean to laugh at you. It had just never occurred to me that humans got embarrassed. I'm still learning how to interpret your speech patterns, so I got got excited when I realized what it was. By the way, is that what it means when your face gets hotter?"

Her face went hot again, brighter than before. "Um... yes. It's called blushing. Hot face can mean other things too, anger or physical strain, physical attraction, a couple of other things. It just means that the blood vessels in the outer layer of skin have dilated and the blood moved closer to the surface."

 _She's text-booking again. That means she's nervous. She must not like admitting that she's clumsy, or that she get's embarrassed. This could be ammo for later._ He silently chuckled at the thought. Then he watched Shadow dip the long swab in the alcohol to Randall and put her hand on his head.

"Hold still please, this will hurt worse if you move. I have to get all the way down in there."

Randall braced himself. He felt the swab graze near the surface of the wound, then gasped when a white hot pain exploded like a firecracker over his eye. Any sense of vision he had was gone. The momentarily blind monster went rigid, his mind blank.

"Easy there Scales. It's okay. I'll be done here in just a minute."

Randall felt the pain reside a little when he noticed that she was massaging the top of his head with her other hand. The pressure was a welcome distraction. Then it was over. The cut over his eye still hurt horribly, but at least the human wasn't poking in it anymore. He noticed that the side of his face seemed to be wet. _Am I bleeding again? Oh well, what does it matter. She done cleaning it at least. No. Don't think it's over Randall._ He told himself. _You can't relax yet. You still need stitches, so don't be a hatchling about it. You can't let this thing think that your weak. She won't be scared of you anymore if she see's you whining over this._ With that, he steeled himself for the next onslaught.

"I think that's as clean as it's going to get. I flushed it out with a squirt bottle..." _That's why my face is wet._ "and nothing came out. Did you know there was rust in there? If you were a human I'd tell you to get a tetanus shot. Anyway, I think it's safe to close it up now."

Randall was silent for a moment while she prepared the thread. _Rust? Really?! Those_ _ **animals**_ _beat me with a fucking rusty shovel! Damn them! Damn them and damn Sullivan! I'll kill that big blue lout if it's the last thing I do. It's his fault I'm stuck with these stinking, barbaric,_ _ **humans**_ _. They might have killed me, and they had never even seen me before. What the fuck is wrong with these things? They might not be toxic, but I understand why we're not supposed to touch them. No one should have to go anywhere near these things._ He reminded himself that Shadow was trying to help, but then he laughed at his own folly. _Who knows why she's being helpful to me. There's no way one human is somehow different from every other human out there. She has to be bad somehow. Don't you ever let your guard down again, Randall, not while you're in this world._

"...to start sowing. Are you okay?"

Randall snapped out of his hate-filled monologue to see Shadow looking at him with her head cocked to the side. "What? I didn't catch that." Randall shook his head, trying to look normal.

"I asked are you okay? You looked like you were a million miles away."

"Don't be ridiculous, I'm right here. And I'm fine. You said something about sowing."

"Oh, I'm ready to start when you are." There was concern in her voice.

"Go ahead." He steeled himself again.

"So about what I asked before, abut you following me, and the car..." She didn't finish her question as she started the first stitch.

"Right. Well, I think I told you before that I was, ahhh..." He winced at the pull of the needle. _It doesn't matter how much it hurts. If you keep talking, you can ignore it._ "Basking in the same spot that the lizard was when you helped it. I moved to the roof of the building after you said it was a loading area. When you came out of the store, I figured you have already helped me once, maybe you could help me find shelter too. So I followed you. I think I was going to hide in your house if I didn't find anywhere else to stay."

"How long have you been in the human world?"

"The day that I followed you was my second day here. How long ago was that?" _I can't tell what she thinks of why I followed her. Damn. At least she doesn't look mad._

"Two days ago. You were knocked unconscious when the car hit you. And you stayed that way until last night, so all of yesterday."

"Damn, really." He winced again as the needle kept moving. _Ignore it you hatching._

"Yeah. I'm sure you want to know how you got here, but I'll tell you that story later. Right now, I really want to know, what made you jump in front of that car?"

This was a hard one. Randall didn't even know the answer himself. _Might as well be honest._ He sighed.

"I don't know, Shadow. Really, I don't. It was a split second. One minute I hear a screech, then I felt myself move, then I woke up in your room. I don't know what happened or why." He waited to gauge her reaction.

"Hmm..." She paused slightly, then continued with the final stitch. "I guess I'll just have to accept that. Maybe you're not all hate after all."

She tied of the last stitch and began cleaning up. Randall said nothing. The pain of tending to his wounds had exhausted him. On top of that, he had food to digest. He had only been awake for about an hour. _Oh well, remember, you're still hurt._

"Shadow?"

"Yes, Scales?"

"I'm going to rest now." He got up, and immediately wobbled.

"Whoa, there big guy!" She braced him with her body before finding places to put her arms. His head ended up on her shoulder, or the part of his head that fit on her shoulder. He tried to struggle away, but his strength was failing him, and she felt so warm. She began walking with him, leaning into him for support. _No! Not again. I can't!_ The thought of being so vulnerable near her pained him worse than his eye. He jerked free of her and landed with all of his limbs on the ground.

"I'm fine!" He looked up and bared his teeth. The human jumped back. "I'll slither there if I have to, but I don't need help." He moved away, getting weaker with every step, but he didn't look back. He only wanted to think about getting into bed. He heard a calm, and melodic voice behind him.

"I'll plug in the electric blanket for you."

Randall heard her walking past him, but ignored her. The blanket was heating when he crawled into the bed. He curled up under it and put his head on the pillow. It was so small that he barely fit on it. He heard the human speak again.

"I still need to change the bandages on your legs. Do you mind if I do that now? I know you're about to go to sleep."

"Fine." He said curtly. Then he remembered how warm she felt when she braced him, and how quick she was to help. He tried to dismissed the sentimental thought, but not before he heard himself mutter a feeble "thank you." He would have chastised himself for it, but he was already asleep.


	6. Tears and Watercolors

Randall woke for the third time in the small, human bed. The first thing that he noticed was that he didn't feel disoriented this time. He remembered exactly where he was, even though he still didn't like it. The human, Faye was her name, must be nearby. He once again noted the sound of purring. It was coming from the very warm spot on the chair next to the bed. _She said it was a cat._ The creature looked at him when he raised his head, then bolted out the open door without warning. _Yep, that's a cat alright._ Randall chuckled, amused that some things never seemed to change. He also noted music coming from somewhere else in the house. It sounded very much like the jazz that he had heard back in the monster world.

 _Jazz? There's no way these dumb animals invented jazz music. They had to have stolen it from the Monster World. But how?_ For a moment, he questioned if there had been humans in the monster world before Sullivan had stolen the child. _No way, there would have been a record of it somewhere. Someone would have noticed._ Randall pushed the question to the back of his mind for later, and looked towards the door. His next thought was to get to a mirror. The image that he had seen the other day in the zoo bathroom still haunted him.

He lifted himself gingerly from the bed, remembering the state he had been in before he fell asleep. A sudden memory of Shadow's warmth against him flashed across his mind. He shook his head and told himself to forget it. She was a stinking human, not a female monster. Randall suddenly felt that he didn't want the creature to know that he was awake yet. He blended himself, then remembered that his legs were covered in bandages. _But these creatures don't notice things above them, like when I was in the city. The ceiling, it's perfect._ He smiled to himself and, happy with his plan, he went to the doorway and observed.

He could smell her scent everywhere, mixed with the smells of the strange, scented smoke and the other animals in the house, but she was not within eyesight or heat sense. The floor was still barely warm from where her bare feet had touched maybe a few minutes ago. The prints led into the room half-way down the hallway from him. That door was open too. He had to pass that door to get to the bathroom, so he climbed the wall and looked into the room while upside-down. He saw the human, her black hair held behind her head, and a multicolored garment hanging loosely around her shoulders. She was perched on a stool in front of an easel and had a hot beverage of some sort in her hand. He watched her take a sip of it while staring at whatever was on the easel. He couldn't read her expression from this distance, but he guessed that she was studying the image before continuing her work. _Good. She'll be busy for a while._ He caught himself wandering if she was working on something similar to her work at the zoo. _Why do you suddenly care about human things?_ He addressed himself in an accusing tone.

He stayed blended, and kept moving toward the bathroom. He noted with a little pride that even though he wasn't healed from his injuries yet, he could already move silently again. He de-blended when he reached the bathroom and very carefully closed the door. _Silent again. Perfect._ He saw the mirror, and suddenly felt a sense of dread at the thought of seeing himself. He took a deep breath and brought himself close enough to get all the details he wanted.

He had been prepared for something less than beautiful, but the site still made his heart sink. He looked like a stranger. He looked pitiful. He looked like a monster that Randall would have no patience or pity for. _Where did all your strength go?_ He asked himself. He put that though away to assess the damage.

The injury to his head was obvious. The cut over his eye from the shovel was still angry, and red, but it looked clean, and the stitches were holding well. The other side was swollen and a horrid shade of greenish-purple that meant he was bruised and would be from some time. _Did the car do that? Or the sidewalk?_ It was clear he had been hit very hard. _Duh! I got hit by a car! I had a concussion. No wonder Shadow was surprised when I got up yesterday! I can't believe I tried to move before my brain had time to heal. What was I thinking?_ Then he reminded himself that he wasn't thinking, that he had been concussed, and was thinking food. He looked back at the damage. Luckily, the bruising was towards the back of his head, and had not affected his other eye. He could see clearly through both of them now, or as clearly as he ever could.

His fronds weren't as pitiful as they had been. They still drooped a bit, but the color was coming back. He tentatively ran his fingers over them, prepared for pain from the touch. It did hurt, but not enough that he couldn't ignore it, and he felt himself relax from the gesture, just a little. What still bothered him most was his expression. He saw that his eyes had a forlorn look to them, and his scales had completely lost their luster. _I look like a monster that lost everything._ The look angered him. Yes he had lost everything, but he hadn't given up. This pitiful monster before his eyes would not make the cut. He was better than that. He resolved to have a more determined expression the next time he saw himself.

The rest of his body was a series of cuts and bruises all the way to his tail. One side was sore to the touch from the car, but no bones had been harmed. And he noticed that the bandages on his legs had dwindled in number. The shallow scrapes had healed over, and the smaller cuts had been given stick-on bandages in place of the cloth ones. _It looks like I'm on the mend, but I should definitely take it easy for a few more days._ He continued to stare and process his poor face for an unknown amount of time. When he had finally had enough of his own self-pity, he decided to go and see what the human was doing. He could not stand there feeling sorry for himself forever.

He left the bathroom, still in a pretty dismal mind-set. He blended, and went into the room where Shadow was painting. She was focused intently on the image in front of her, and the brush moved slowly across the canvass. Curious, Randall went behind her to look over her shoulder. He had to stand on his hind legs in order to get a good look, since she was taller than he was, standing normally. He saw an image of a human-like creature with the wings of a butterfly. The beauty of her wings was breathtaking, and the creature looked very delicate, like something you would have to handle very gently if you were to touch it. Randall couldn't help but feel like this winged girl was something to be treasured. There was something very not-human to her, something that elevated her from the animal that created her. She was looking up at he viewer of the painting with a look in her eyes that cried for someone to protect and treasure her, an expression of helplessness.

What confused Randall was that the creature was obviously injured, covered in bruises, and had been painted in a position on the floor like she had been pushed or fallen down. A human shaped shadow loomed over her with it's fist raised. Randall realized that the helpless cry for protection was aimed at her attacker, whoever that was. The image wasn't finished. There were many places where color and shadow still needed to be added, but it was obviously an emotionally charged piece. Randall's main question was why? Why would someone attack something so fragile? More importantly, why was Shadow painting her like this? It didn't occur to him on a conscious level, but it's likely that he felt sympathy for the winged creature because her injured and helpless state mirrored his own.

The human had stopped working and was taking another sip of her beverage, which had cooled by now. Randall forgot for a moment that he had come in while blended and that she wasn't aware of his presence. He wanted to know about the painting.

"What exactly is this?" He didn't even think before he spoke.

Shadow jumped from her stool and made a short, high pitched yelp. _Is that what an adult human's scream sounds like?_ As she jumped, she spun around and knocked over the stool and the stand that her paints and brushes were sitting on. The sudden movement startled Randall and reminded him to de-blend himself. The human put a hand to her chest and breathed heavily for a second before exclaiming, "What the hell?"

The look on her face was priceless, and it dawned on Randall that he had scared her, really scared her. _Randall, you've still got it._ He felt a mixture of relief, pride, and amusement welling up in his belly. The pain of dealing with his reflection seemed to lift, and he cracked a smile in spite of himself.

"It's not funny, Scales, now I..." she looked at the mess around her. "Damn it, what were you thinking?"

"I didn't mean it. I just.." She looked so silly, standing there surrounded by splashed colors and her hand over her chest. He chuckled. "It was an accident."

"I said it wasn't funny. Stop laughing at me!"

Her scrunched up face was even funnier, and he laughed out loud.

"I mean it! Please?" She took a step back, and nearly stumbled after stepping on paintbrush.

He couldn't help but laugh again.

"I can't... I mean... Will you stop? I have to... are you going to help me clean this up or not?"

"Sure, Shadow." He could clearly see that she was becoming distressed, but the elation he was feeling made it nearly impossible to maintain his composure. He tried. But soon chuckled again, despite his best efforts. "But you have to admit it's pretty funny." He chuckled again.

"SHUT UP!" She threw her paint brush at him and missed, hitting the wall. Then a look of terror crossed her face and she ran out the room.

Hearing the brush clatter behind his head sobered Randall up in a heart beat. _Oh no! I'd better fix this before she really does hurt me with something._ Randall ran after her. "Shadow! Shadow, stop. I didn't mean it." He rounded the corner into the living room and she was opening the door to run outside. _Oh man, what was her real name? Faye, it's Faye!_ "Faye wait. Please!" Hearing her name made her pause. She looked over her shoulder at him and waited for him to speak.

"Look, I'm sorry I laughed, okay?" It hurt to apologize to a human, but he did need her to forgive him. She was his caretaker. "I didn't mean to startle you, really, it's just something I'm uncommonly good at." It wasn't a lie. "Please, come back in and talk to me. I can't chase you out there."

Shadow continue to stand with the door open and spoke in a grave tone. "That was the point."

"What?" _What does she mean, the point to what?_

"I'll come back in if you promise you don't want to hurt me." Her eyebrows became raised. "I'm sorry I threw the brush at you. I wasn't thinking. Please don't be too angry?" Her voice cracked on the 'please' of the last sentence.

 _She didn't run to get a weapon. She ran because she was scared of me._ He pondered the thought for a second before deciding it was a good thing.

"I'll behave if you will." He said. He watched her take a deep breath and slowly step back into the house and close the door behind her. She looked at him with an unreadable expression, but when she didn't speak, he guessed that she expected him to speak first. "Okay, now, will you tell me what's wrong? I honestly didn't mean to scare you." He decided to try to be patient with the frightened human.

Faye stood with the unmistakable posture of someone who felt cornered, one arm hung down with it's fist clenched, the other hand gripped that arm above the elbow. She kept her head down and seemed to be avoiding eye contact. _I've seen monsters that looked like that, like Fungus when I yelled at him. That's one more thing our species have in common. Hmm._ She looked up and spoke.

"I'm not scared. Well, I'm afraid that you might be angry at me for throwing the brush at you. But... Well, you startled me and then you laughed. I just... I normally wouldn't care, really, even if you meant it. Hell, startle me any other time and you can laugh all you want. I get it, it's funny. Just... It sounds so silly. In my head" She paused to take a deep breath. "I'm in a special frame of mind when I'm working. The project I'm working on puts me in an awful head space. It's, personal to me, this project. So I'm asking from a very vulnerable place, please don't do something like that when I'm in my studio. I won't be able to control my reactions." She looked him in the eye, and Randall squinted to read her better. _She's pleading with me. Just how much does that painting mean to her? It can't be that important, can it?_ He decided to ask her about it.

"Okay, I can do that. I promise I won't bother you while you're painting. What is it you're making that's so emotional anyway. I saw it, but I don't think I get it."

"Come here, I'll show you." And with that, she walked past him, and around the corner to her studio. _What is it with this human?They're all nuts!_ He rolled his eyes and followed her.

She asked him to wait in the middle of the room next to a table with an unreadable clutter of supplies on it. She opened a drawer and took out a stack of large, rectangular sheets of paper. She brought them to the table and cleared a space by shoving several things aside with one arm. She set the first one down.

"I normally don't talk about works in progress, but as long as you're staying here, I think you need to understand this." She pointed to the piece in front of him. He looked and saw the figure from last picture, a delicate, ethereal creature with captivating wings. This time, she was dancing with a male human and obviously in love. The joy in the posture of the winged creature was so infectious, Randall couldn't help but smile at her happiness. At the bottom of the image was a bit of writing. It said, "My dark past doesn't matter. You've changed me. It's like a fairy tale." _What's the point of this? And what is the winged creature? It's too colorful and pretty to be a human, but it's not a monster either._

"What do you see?" It was Shadow who spoke.

"I see a winged creature that I don't recognize. She's happy. It looks like she's in love. Is the quote at the bottom something the human said?"

"The human? Oh, you mean the man, yes. It's his quote. The girl is a fairy, does the monster world not have fairy tales?"

"No, what exactly is a fairy supposed to be?" Then he remembered something. "That's what the dark human called you. You said it sounded like... something about eyes and glitter."

Shadow laughed. "Oh yeah, that's always been her nickname for me. I always tell her that I don't like it, even though I actually do, then she tells me she'll come up with something else, even though we both know she won't. It's the same interchange every time. But the short explanation of a fairy is that they are magical creatures known for their grace and beauty. In the stories, they grant wishes and make humans' dreams come true. They can be portrayed as being tiny enough to stand on my finger," she held up her finger for reference, "or as tall as a normal person. Most importantly, they all have wings to fly with, usually delicate ones like a butterfly's or in some stories, their wings are made of fragile things like flower petals, spider silk, or dried leaves."

"I see that she's supposed to be delicate, but in the picture you were painting earlier, it looked like the fairy was hurt, like she had been attacked. If the fairies are so delicate and special, why would someone hurt one?" He frowned, puzzled.

Shadow smiled grimly. "You're closer to getting it than you know." Then she put the next picture down.

It showed the fairy in a house. Her body was pointed towards the door and her wings were in mid-flap. She was turning her head back as if someone had called out to her as she was leaving. She had a smile on her face similar to the smile that she had when dancing. There was another text block at the bottom of this one. "I don't want you to go out tonight. If something happened to you out there, I don't know what I'd do. You're my world." _That must be another quote from the human she loves. So, what's the story? Fairy falls for human man, human tells her things. He doesn't want her to leave the house? That's weird._

"So in this one, I guess they are living together. She wants to fly, but he just told her not to. Sounds kind of, controlling, but she obviously still loves him anyway. Maybe he really is concerned for her?" He looked to Shadow for some kind of confirmation.

"Yep." It was her only response before putting down the next picture.

This one was a close up of the fairy, with her face turned to a three-quarters view. There was a mark on the wall behind her where some kind of food had been thrown. Her eyes were enlarged and wet. Tears rolled down her face, but she still somehow looked beautiful. Randall wished his eyesight was better so he could see her eyes more clearly. They looked liquid. The text block said, "Please don't cry. I'm just stressed, and I can't handle you nagging on top of it. I'll do better, I promise. I love you more than anything."

 _I think I know where this is going, maybe?_ It wasn't common in the Monster World, but Randall had heard rumors of monster guys hurting their mates for whatever reason. He had never been sure why a girl would stay with a guy who did something like that. He himself could certainly be violent, especially towards stupid monsters, but he couldn't imagine hurting a female that he cared about. Girls were different, you just didn't hit them. A brief flash of his mother entered his mind, and he pushed it away.

"Do these paintings tell a story? Does it just get worse from here?" Randall asked.

"Yes." Faye sighed. "I still have several more paintings to go, but these are the first. It's a series of watercolors that are going in an exhibition in December, so I have two months, almost. I'll have ten images by then. And the story will be complete."

"But what is the story? I get that he's going to get worse, but why does she stay?"

"She believes him." Shadow began making herself busy by gathering the papers up and carrying them back to their drawer. It was obvious she didn't want to say much else.

"Why it hard for you to paint and talk about it?" Randall suddenly had a shocking thought. "This didn't happen to you did it? Are you the fairy in the picture?" He almost didn't want to ask, but curiosity got the better of him. She stopped moving.

"No, it's not me. The fairy in this story dies at the end." She went back to an almost frantic pace of organizing the clutter.

 _She lost someone! She's telling the story of someone she cared about. Oh wow! That's it! She's giving wings to the girl that died. What if it's because she couldn't save her? Do humans do that? Is this how a human works through grief? That's... it's so sad, but there's beauty too. I don't know how to feel about this. I've got to ask her about it._ He made up his mind.

"Shadow?"

"Yes, Scales?"

"Was the fairy someone you knew?"

There was a long pause.

"Sarah. Her name was Sarah." She paused and seemed to muse to herself. "Saying it out loud still hurts a bit." She gave a weak smile and looked at her feet. "She always said that he was going to get better and they would be happy again. We all tried to do something about it. I called the cops twice. She always got him out of trouble. She told me she didn't want any help." Shadow stood the stool back up and sat down on it. "That creep had her so fucking beat down that she really thought she deserved all of it, that she could never have anyone better than him. Eventually, we stopped seeing her. He wouldn't let her leave the house." She had stopped her busy work and was now sitting on the stool next to the easel.

"I went over there one day when I knew she would be alone. I wanted to talk some sense into her. She was afraid that he would find her if she left, and he would hurt her for leaving. We came up with a plan that she would give him a few sleeping pills in his dinner and I would take her out to stay with my aunt after he went to bed. The..." She swallowed, her voice had been becoming strained. "The last thing she said to me was "I'll see you tonight. I think you just saved my life." She began to shake.

"He said it was an accident. He said that they got in a fight and she wouldn't stop screaming at him. He actually told the judge that all he wanted was for her to stop screaming, and that it was an accident. He got accidental manslaughter, and he'll be out in just a few years." She stood up and began moving her arms as if she were gesturing to a scene in front of her that Randall couldn't see. "He kept her prisoner for two whole years! He tortured her mind and beat her! Then he fucking killed her the night she was going to escape! He fucking strangled her so she would stop screaming! I..." She bit her lip and looked away for a moment. "She must have told him what she was going to do. She must have wanted to stand up to him, just once." She looked Randall in the eyes.

"I know that if I hadn't have gone over there and said what I said to her, if I have done it differently, she would still be alive. Sarah died because of my misguided," she spat the word, "attempt to help her. And because some people are just born sick." She seemed to smile for a moment. "You're right to be afraid of humans my friend, there are some good ones out there, like Carol, and my aunt, and Mr. Davidson, my college watercolor professor, but you can't hardly tell which ones are good and which ones are like Steve, not from looking at them. She thought that I'd saved her. I still remember the look in her eyes. It was like she was feeling hope for the first time in two years. I relive that every time I sit down to paint this project. But I have to finish it. I have to... I don't know. Maybe it's that I have to say good bye this way, it may be the only way I know. Does that make any sense?"

She looked up at Randall, who had been standing there, listening and trying to process the whole story. He had been right, but he wasn't prepared for the sudden burst of emotion coming from the human in front of him, or expect her to share the way she did. Maybe it was a form of catharsis. _Maybe she just needed to say it all out loud to vent the pressure, and I just happened to be here at the right time._ He decided that that was pretty likely. It still meant that humans were far more emotionally complex than he had given them credit for. He would have to dwell on that for a while before really accepting it, but consciously, he knew it was true.

"I think so. I won't bother you while you're working anymore. I think I'll leave you alone for a while, if that's okay?"

"Yeah, I need some time too. I'm tired now." She sat down on her stool and began staring at her work once more.

 _She must be emotionally drained from remembering all that._ He felt a pain in his belly that he could only mean that he felt sympathy for the grieving human. _If you had told me a week ago that I would feel this way over the sorrow of a human, I would have punched someone. What is my life coming to?_ He turned to leave the room, but a voice in his head stopped him to say one last thing.

"Shadow?" She looked up at him. "I'm sorry." He watched her head as she nodded and turned around again. _I hope that was enough._


End file.
